


And Words

by undercovercaptain



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Italian Summer, Sexy times at the villa
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2019-06-07 10:15:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15216962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/undercovercaptain/pseuds/undercovercaptain
Summary: It's been a long, long timeSince I've memorised your face...(Futile Devices, Sufjan Stevens)His lips on hers tell her better than all his stumbling words. Whatever had held them apart, whatever had restrained their bodies before, is now gone. Down below, the music drifts upwards, slipping through the open window, rising, falling in the moonlight, softly curling around them as he edges her towards the bed.





	1. Sun Stroke

**Author's Note:**

> So this wasn't really planned but I decidedly to go with it anyway...maybe it's the heat outside getting to me, but here's my attempt at some sexy summer Stansa ;)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this wasn't really planned but I decidedly to go with it anyway...maybe it's the heat outside getting to me, but here's my attempt at some sexy summer Stansa ;)

The clouds are wispy white against the deep blue sky. Barely clinging on until they inevitably dissolve into the ether and disappear completely. It is sweltering out here. He regrets wearing his jacket, so shrugs it off, and rolls up his shirtsleeves, revealing his too pale English arms to the scorching rays of the Italian sun. It had been cooler when he had left that morning, catching the 8.09 train from Naples to Sorrento, packed full of eager tourists, camera laden, headed for the ruins of Pompeii, and fast-talking natives gesticulating wildly to one another.

It had been a four-hour journey with several stops. Maybe he should have caught one of those _diretto_ trains instead, but at the time of purchase, several hours of window gazing hadn’t seemed so bad. Quite appealing actually. Delaying the inevitable. But after reading several warnings about pickpockets on Tripadvisor _,_ he’d spent most of the journey warily clutching onto his one piece of luggage — a brown leather carryall he’d bought years ago at the John Lewis on Oxford Street — refusing to put it up in the overhead storage.

He’d packed light. A change of shoes. A few shirts in varying shades of blue. One tried and tested suit to wear at the Milan Design Fair, so he could stand stoically and smartly dressed by his firm’s display unit. Just a few things. Just enough to last him through the obligatory meet and greets; the hand-shaking; the appreciating of fine craftsmanship; the pointing out to his newly hired art school graduate, Nick, that _this_ is what we call “good design.” And then finally the long planned visit to see a potential supplier in Naples.

He didn’t really need to go in person. But quality checks are always valuable. So he’d gone, tried to use what little he could remember from GCSE Italian, then sent over his findings in a lengthy email to Davos and Nick back at the studio.

Catching a four-hour train to Sorrento hadn’t been part of the plan. The plan was to get on the 14.50 Naples flight to Gatwick, then hop on an overground train towards Clapham Junction, get to the flat, dump stuff, then pop over to the Sainsbury’s Local on Clapham High Street to pick up dinner. Something no fuss. Maybe pumpkin and sage ravioli to continue on with the Italian theme. Hopefully they were still on offer. They had been the last time he’d been in there to pick up milk and a copy of _The Observer_. But none of that mattered now.

He should never have mentioned in that text to Robert that he was in Naples. And likewise, he shouldn’t have let Davos bagger him into going on an impromptu holiday. _Nick and I will man the ship for you while you’re away, have a break for once in your life_ , he’d said. Well, he’s been waiting outside of this train station for at least half an hour. Waiting. Waiting for his brother to show up and drive him to this bloody villa like he said he would.

It’s not even Robert’s villa. It’s his new girlfriend’s. His new _Italian_ girlfriend. Yes, fresh off the divorce and he’s shacked with some Monica Bellucci lookalike. Only Robert could pull that off. Only _his_ brother.

When he was an awkward, gangly teenager, he’d always thought girls went for Robert because he was handsome in that effortless way that is all at once enthralling without being threatening. Now that he’s a slightly better adjusted adult he’s starting think there must be something else to his brother, because they can’t be going for his looks this time around. Though to be fair to Robert, being married to Cersei Lannister would probably lead many a weak-willed man to seek solace in copious amounts of alcohol and twenty-piece chicken nugget boxes.

He checks his wristwatch. 12.45. He groans, tipping his head back with eyes firmly shut. He heaves out a sigh that’s all hot air. He keeps waiting, slumped against the outside wall of the train station, barely in the shade, carryall still clutched in his hand but slowly slipping out of his grasp as the weight of it drags down his arm. Absentmindedly, he wonders if he’ll end up with one longer than the other. It’s with a dull thump that the bag finally hits the ground.

 _This is the last time I do something spontaneous_ , he thinks. Maybe he’s just not made for relaxation. Maybe this was all a big mistake and he should just shell out the extra hundred odd quid for another flight home. Maybe—

He hears the car before he sees it, a great rumbling thing, attention grabbing. _Jesus Christ._ When Robert finally rocks up it’s in a bright red Maserati. _Oh God._ He’s like one of those old white men who drive around in flashy sports cars in Central London, still getting stuck in traffic just the same as everybody else, despite the naught to sixty in whatever seconds.

“Been waiting long?” he asks jovially from the open window, cutting the engine and sliding up his Ray Bans to have a better look at him.

“Yes, actually. My train got in at 12.09. I did text you.”

“Oh. Right. Lost track of time.”

Robert’s smile is so easy, so relaxed. God, it pisses him off to no end.

“Well, don’t just stand there, Stanny.” He hears the little chirp that signals the car-boot opening. “Put your bag away and let’s get moving.”

 _Why am I here? Why did you invite me?_ he wants to ask, but keeps quiet. The windows are all the way down and he relishes the cool air now steadily pummelling his face. They are leaving Sorrento. Passing lemon trees and gelato stands. Heading out of the seaside city overlooking the Bay of Naples, along the Amalfi Drive; a lengthy stretch of road carving itself out of the side of the coastal cliffs, offering up plunging, terrifying views of the Tyrrhenian Sea below.

“I think you’ll really like Alessandra. She’s one hell of a woman, Stannis. One hell of a woman.” Robert drums his fingers against the steering wheel and smiles. “And she’s got an amazing place. Seventeenth century. Fruit trees everywhere!”

“Great.”

He just wants to lean back, close his eyes and then wake up somewhere cool and comfortable. He doesn’t want to spend the whole car journey chitchatting for God knows how long.

“Try to muster up a bit of enthusiasm, Stannis.”

“I’m just tired.”

His brother takes his eyes off the road for a second and looks at him. Rumpled and creased. Stubble faced, with dark circles under his eyes. He _does_ look tired. But then a certain level of exhaustion has always followed Stannis around, beginning somewhere in the early 2000s probably, hanging around his neck like the ancient mariner’s albatross.

“Alright then. But you’ll have to do better with everyone else. They’re not as accustomed to your grouchiness as I am.”

He shoots Robert a disgruntled side-eye at that last comment. _You’ve never been around me enough to become accustomed to anything_ , he wants to retort. Wants to hiss out. To grind out in wounded frustration. _Not that I want you around anyway._

To fill the silence Robert presses a button on the dashboard, causing lights to flash on, followed by a familiar drumbeat and the sound of glossy synths through the car’s speakers. _I get up in the evening, and I ain’t got nothing to say._ The drumming on the steering wheel starts up again, fingers still tapping as he changes gears, tap-tap-tapping against the gearstick. _I come home in the morning; I go to bed feeling the same way._ A hand drifts back over to the CD player, eyes still on the road. He turns a circular knob, clockwise. _I ain’t nothing but tired._ Little bars appear on the touchscreen, twelve moving up to sixteen. _Man, I’m just tired and bored with myself._ _Hey there baby, I could use just a little help._

Stannis watches his brother. _You can’t start a fire._ His ruddy, bearded face contorted in intense enjoyment. _You can’t start a fire without a spark._ Lips mouthing along and brow lowered in concentration. _This gun’s for hire._ He’s happy. Really happy. _Even if we’re just dancing in the dark._

It doesn’t feel right. A small, pathetic part of himself had relished his brother’s misfortune when his marriage fell apart. Awful as it sounds, it was a kind of comfort. Robert, always-gets-what-he-wants Robert, always wins, always succeeds Robert. _He_ had fucked something up. Wasn’t this new, lowered state meant to last a bit longer? How can everything suddenly be even better than it was before? Beautiful Italian girlfriend, flashy car, singing along to Bruce Springsteen with the windows rolled down…

He thinks back to his own past relationships. The thing with Mel hadn’t actually been all that long ago. Emphasis on _thing_ rather than relationship. She’d been part of the Graphics department while he’d briefly been teaching Product & Furniture Design at Kingston; a few lectures and seminars slotted into the week along with the usual goings on at the studio in Battersea.

He never asked her out. There was never any conscious action or thought on his part to do so, because, well…she was attractive and sophisticated, wearing silky blouses and always having a few tendrils of hair spilling out of her carefully constructed up-do. And he was…he was reserved, if you were being kind, introverted, if you were being technical, and an unsociable arsehole, if you were being brutal. Call it middle child syndrome. Call it an inferiority complex. Call it whatever you like. At thirty-five years of age he had somewhat resigned himself to the life of the eternal bachelor.

But the thing with Mel had just _happened_.

They’d been on the same train a few times. Then subsequently walked into the university together, passing by portfolio carrying art students arriving early for their 9ams. She’d smile whenever she saw him. A slow up-curl of her painted lips. And he would give her a nod of recognition in return. This kind of silent back and forth, acknowledging one another but never letting it progress into something more, went on for most of the first semester. Until one afternoon she got up and followed him when he got off at Clapham Junction. That boldness, that unflinching confidence, it had intrigued him more than he’ll ever admit. Maybe because it was so completely the opposite of how he felt whenever he was forced to interact with a potential romantic partner. Whatever it was, she had his full attention from then on.

They’d gone for a drink at this refurbed Victorian place, full of strange wall-mounted taxidermy, scuffed wooden floors and pretty vintage tiling. She’d followed him and so now he followed her, reluctant to suddenly take the reigns of this impromptu date. Still wary as to why she actually wanted to spend time with him.

He doesn’t really drink, but he’d had a gin and tonic — the pub had its own distillery — just to be polite. She’d had the same. And then two became four, doubling, quadrupling, until the stealthy drunkenness that only comes from drinking spirits hit him like a cricket bat to the face. And so they’d gone back to his flat, supposedly for coffee, but who wants coffee at 12.30am on a Friday? So instead they had tripped over trousers and tumbled out of their shirts, lips locked and hands searching. Then he’d fucked her on the kitchen counter, hot thighs around his lower back, keeping him close as he frantically slammed into her, their nearly naked bodies jarring a nearby pot of utensils; whisks and wooden spoons rattling with every thrust.

They’d never really talked. Not in the way couples are meant to. And if there was talking it was predominantly whispered seductions of _let’s get out of here_ , and _I need you inside me now._ They didn’t talk. But just because he doesn’t particularly like talking, or think he’s very good at it, doesn’t mean he can’t see the value in it. That’s always been his problem really. Not talking when he should’ve done. Being so afraid of being manipulated, of being vulnerable that he tries to shut himself off from feelings altogether.

It’s over now, has been for a while, and admittedly he does feel some sense of relief. But he still doesn’t really want to think about it. Think about _them_. Her with _him_. It’s the embarrassment, the being taken for a fool, which grates at him. But at the end of the day, he didn’t know her, not really, and he hadn’t ever let her close enough to know him. It no longer matters. It’s done.

They’re rumbling down a tree-lined driveway now, early afternoon sunlight filtering through the leaves, kaleidoscopic, and blinding. The air feels cooler here. Calm. Peaceful. Alessandra’s villa emerges from behind cypress trees. Creamy coloured stonework with turquoise shutters, tall and shady, with a large table out front.

He feels a little stiff as he slides out of the car. Uneasy. Introductions would have to be exchanged. Kisses to cheeks, handshakes, maybe even an overly familiar hug. The rest of Europe tended to have a certain etiquette for all this: one kiss or two, or even three. Brits on the other hand, there are no rules. In a society for so long dominated by the class system there is no set way of greeting someone, other than perhaps polite discomfiture.

There’s Alessandra, naturally, who Robert greets with an enthusiastic shout, grabbing her round the waist and then bending her into an uncomfortably passionate kiss. She is beautiful, in that Mediterranean way, dark hair, dark eyes, but also reassuringly age appropriate. She laughs breathlessly when she’s finally released, then promptly saunters over to take Stannis’ hand and kiss him on his right cheek.

“Ciao, ciao! Stannis, welcome!”

The other Italians are Tania and Aurelio, a smiling couple in their late forties who greet him like a long lost relative, now returned to the familial bosom; then Carina, Alessandra’s younger sister, equally attractive, but whose smile reminds him a little too much of Mel’s; then Vincent, not quite full Italian, though he’s inherited all their easy charm, who grasps his hand and grins at him as if he knows something Stannis doesn’t.

Then there are the Brits: his brother, Renly, who gives him a hug and a wry smile, almost as if to say _I can’t believe you actually came_ , and his boyfriend, Loras, who offers him a friendly handshake, telling him “it’s good to see you again.” He half believes him, half doesn’t.

What takes him by surprise is that Loras’ younger sister is here, tiny shorts and tanned skin, and beside her there’s someone else too. Someone eerily familiar, perhaps he knows her, or knew her a long time ago, he can’t remember, can’t place her high cheek-boned face. Early twenties and a shy smile, with recognition in her bright blue eyes as he continues to frown down at her. Then she tucks a flyaway strand of copper hair behind her ear and he suddenly recognises her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Side Notes:
> 
> \- Just to clear up some geography, both Kingston Art School and Clapham, where Stannis lives, are in South West London. Stannis' original plan was to fly back to Gatwick, which is an airport closer to Central London. 
> 
> Intrigued? I blame non-stop listening to the Sufjan songs from Call Me By Your Name. 
> 
> Reviews, as always, are very much appreciated!
> 
> Cappy x


	2. Looking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So pleased with all the great feedback from the first chapter :D Hope you guys enjoy this new one from Sansa's pov.
> 
> (Disclaimer: I don't own anything apart from my OCs, but special shoutout to Call Me By Your Name for being a major influence. A beautiful book and film). 
> 
> An amendment: I changed the last line of the first chapter from "he remembers who she is" to "he recognises her." Just because I think it makes more sense with this new chapter. 
> 
> P.S. If you want to see a photoset I made for this fic check out my tumblr: 
> 
> https://cappymightwrite.tumblr.com/post/175687796657/its-been-a-long-long-time-since-ive-memorised

She almost wants to laugh out loud, a nervous expulsion just to defuse the embarrassment of _he doesn’t remember you, he doesn’t remember you!_ Was she so very different? More grown up, maybe. No more boxy school blazer and ugly striped tie. She tries to rationalise it, tries to make sense of it. The being so easily forgotten. She isn’t loud like Arya, or the golden boy like Robb, or adventurous like Bran, or the baby like Rickon. It shouldn’t bother her; it shouldn’t irk her so much. It’s not like she ever paid him much attention either.

So it shouldn’t come as such a relief when there is a flash of recognition in his steely blue gaze: a faint widening of his eyes, a minute raising of his eyebrows. But then it’s gone. His mask of impassivity is re-adorned, because now he’s being guided away from her, ushered into the house by Alessandra. The rest of them are left to loiter around the large wooden table and its cluster of mismatched, but attractively rustic chairs, waiting for their inevitable return so that lunch can commence. Idly, she wonders which room he’ll be put in.

She’s only been here two nights, but very quickly things have settled into a comfortable rhythm of alfresco eating, wine drinking, lounging by the pool in various states of undress, and trips down to the beach where the sun shimmers across the water like the surface of an aquamarine. It’s a little strange to be on holiday with Uncle Robert, her dad’s closest friend, with Robert’s _girlfriend_ , without her parents. At first, she was somewhat hesitant to go, feeling like she was still one of “the kids,” despite being a recent university graduate. But who says no to Italy? And Marge wanted her there. So she’d gone, hoping to delay her entrance into the post-uni world, hoping to put off her search for a suitable internship for a bit longer.

At her seat at the table, she begins to gaze off into space, hands resting heavily in the folds of her light summer dress. She tries not to think about _him_ , but fails miserably, because even though he has just gone, her irritation towards him has not. So admitting defeat, she lets her mind wonder to his stiff greetings; the creased jacket tucked under one arm; the brown leather carryall held by the other; the light blue of his shirt against the bluey-green of the window shutters. Her eyes flicker to a nearby tree, a Mediterranean pine, where a lonely blackbird is perching, singing a few notes that are immediately drowned out by the rattle of the cicadas and the murmuring of accented voices. She feels herself frown, if only for a moment.

Glancing at her best friend, she sees Margaery bent at the elbows, intently listening to some anecdote Vincent is telling. She’s missed the beginning, distracted by her own thoughts, so just watches the intermittent way his tanned hand rotates at the wrist, animating his words with casual, practiced ease. Out of the corner of her eye, just as the Vincent’s audience burst into amused laughter, she sees Tania rise and head inside, towards the kitchen. So she follows, wanting to help in whatever way she can.

The older woman hears her hurried step, turns and smiles warmly back at her. Her sandaled feet make a light slapping sound against the tiled floor as she follows close behind, her white dress blending in with the villa’s white washed walls. In the kitchen, Tania takes hold of a plate of braised artichokes, stuffed with parsley, garlic, and mint, and drizzled with a generous helping of olive oil. Outside the large, airy kitchen, footsteps can be heard moving along the upstairs landing.

She hears someone on the stairs, and unconsciously tenses as they start walking down the hallway, heading for the kitchen. One hand curls around the folds of her skirt, as one sandaled foot cautiously inches forward.

“Ciao, bella,” Alessandra says when she appears in the doorway, “everything alright?” She leans forward and tucks a loose strand of red hair behind her ear and smiles, but there’s a hint of concern in her dark eyes.

“Yep, I—I just…it’s nothing.”

“Cara mia, will you take the tomato salad?”

Tania’s warm, lilting voice makes her jump a little, despite its motherly softness. She feels a blush muster in her cheeks as she turns away from the open doorway. Hurrying into action, she quickly joins her by the kitchen counter, where an array of salads, crusty bread, and cuts of cured meat have been laid out. Alessandra comes over as well, but at a more leisurely pace. The tomato salad is made up of sliced plum tomatoes, tossed together with garlic-steeped red wine vinegar and olive oil, then spread over a deep serving dish, seasoned with salt and pepper, and sprinkled with freshly torn basil leaves. She takes it in her hands and smiles happily, all previous thoughts and wonderings replaced by eager anticipation.

“Grazie, Sansa.” Then there is a pause, and a curious smile emerges on Tania’s face, as she looks over at Alessandra. “He is a strange one, no?” she says, titling her head in the direction of the sunlit hallway, grey streaked, honey coloured hair bouncing with the movement. Her voice is hushed and knowing, with the word “strange” sounding oddly like a compliment—a characteristic to be intrigued by—rather than a criticism.

“Not like Robert, no,” agrees Alessandra; in her hands is a large wooden bowl filled with dressed lettuce, which has been tossed together with crumbled bits of Gorgonzola and toasted walnuts. “He is a, more… _reserved_ , I think. _Timido_.”

Tania nods, her eyebrows lifting slightly as she tries to suppress an amused grin.

“We’ve met before,” Sansa admits sheepishly, “when I was a lot younger. But I—I think he’s forgotten who I am.”

Both women smile widely at her, in a way that suggests they don’t quite believe her. _He forgot who I was! You were there!_ she wants to exclaim in exasperation, but Sansa holds her tongue. She wouldn’t want to be rude. She likes Tania and Alessandra. Immensely, actually. Both women are so warm and good-natured, the latter being completely the opposite of Robert’s now _ex_ -wife. And there is something so playfully mischievous about the pair of them, but they never make her feel as if she isn’t part of the joke. Which she is eternally grateful for. She always hated it when Arya teased and berated her. _Girls are meant to stick together._

When they leave the kitchen, holding their respective salads, he is there at the bottom of the staircase. Tall and stiff, halted in his tracks with one hand on the bannister. His eyes shift from Tania, to Alessandra, who both smile back him, then to the salads, and then finally to Sansa. But it is only a fleeting glance. A cursory, obligatory show of interest, she thinks, as her eyes meet his during the split second they are looking in her direction.

“Can I help at all?” he calls out suddenly, looking at the two older women.

This is the first time she has heard him actually speak, she realises. Well, not the _first_ first time, but the first in a long time. And it shocks her how much she likes his voice: the evenness of his words as he says them; smooth and attractively deep; inescapably commanding, even when he’s asking a question.

“There’s more salads in the kitchen,” she hurriedly replies, then immediately blushes. _What is wrong with me?_ She looks down at the salad in her hands, at the little globules of oil floating atop the bright red of the sliced tomatoes.

“Ok.”

And then he is walking past her, and Sansa lifts her head to allow her eyes to follow the back of his dark head as he slips into the kitchen. She feels annoyed with herself. She had been perfectly willing to brand him as difficult and unapproachable, all for the sake of her wounded pride. In the walk from the patio table to the kitchen, she had vowed to have nothing to do with him.

With a new sense of conviction, she throws herself into ignoring him completely. As everyone pulls in their chairs at the table, eager to tuck in, Sansa joins Margaery in lavishing Tania and Alessandra with compliments. There is no such thing as Italian _haute cuisine_ because there are no high or low roads in Italian cooking. All roads lead to the home, to _la cucina di casa_.

Conversations are struck up: the best places to go food shopping, which region this wine is from, the scruffy charm of nearby Sorrento, how this salad is prepared, whose recipe? The talk is animated. Hands, which are not clutching wine glasses, are flung into the air in rhapsody, falling back down upon the table only to be flung up once more a few minutes later.

She doesn’t let herself wonder at whether he is joining in or not. Keeps her ears deaf to the sound of his voice. Keeps her body angled towards Margaery, who is sitting beside her and is nodding along as Carina talks about her last trip to London. She reaches across the table and accepts a large glass bottle of water from a smiling Aurelio. The water trickles out slowly as she tips her hand, pouring it while still listening to Carina’s description of the various shops tucked into the archways of Covent Garden. A big glug splashes up against her hand before she sets the bottle down, returning it to the centre of the table to sit beside loaf of fresh bread, which is swiftly diminishing in size.

Sansa swipes her hand across her flushed face, running her wet fingers through her loose hair, sweeping it over her shoulder so that she can feel the warm breeze against the side of her neck. It is at this moment that she senses him staring at her, the keenest glance coming from her left. She can’t help feeling a little thrilled, flattered at having captured his attention at last. Though maybe he isn’t looking at her? Maybe he’s looking at Margaery. She leans back in her chair, titling it back slightly so she can look past Renly, who is sitting in between them. She shoots Stannis a quick glance, half expecting, half hoping to see him staring back at her. But he isn’t. Instead he has his head determinedly down, a piece of bread in his hand to mop up the oily juices on his plate.

After lunch, everyone lounges about, some in bathing suits, inside and outside the house, bodies sprawled everywhere, killing time until dinner. Sansa sits by the pool, watching as Renly, Loras, and Margaery scream and splash one another. Her dress is fanned out around her, blinding white in the light of the afternoon sun, as her feet kick slowly back and forth beneath the water. She didn’t want to swim, having recently washed her hair that morning. So she just watches her friends play around, pushing each other under with mock violence.

“Come swim, Sansa!” cries Margaery, pushing her wet hair out of her eyes.

“I wouldn’t call what you’re doing _swimming_ ,” she retorts with amusement.

“Join us!” calls Loras from the other end of the pool where he is balancing on his boyfriend’s shoulders.

“Yes, come on, Sansa!” Renly agrees, suddenly bucking Loras off with a loud splash.

And then the youngest Baratheon brother is wading ominously towards her, shark-like grin in place and duh-na-duhning the _Jaws_ theme. Sansa’s eyes widen in genuine terror and she tries to scramble away, to slide backwards, out of reach.

“Don’t you dare!” she yells, “Renly, I’m serious, don’t!”

But he doesn’t listen and when he reaches the pool’s edge he lunges forward and pulls her in by the legs. She falls in, mouth open in a startled yelp so when she resurfaces she’s spluttering and coughing up water. Sansa’s eyes are screwed shut as she fumbles backwards, trying to find the edge of the pool while the boys laugh uproariously.

“Renly!” Margaery admonishes, though she can hear the laughter in her voice.

Out of the pool, she furiously rubs her stinging eyes with the heels of her hands as the water drips down her sodden body, creating a little puddle beneath her feet. When she opens her eyes, glancing down at her soaked dress, she flushes right up to the roots of her equally red hair. She is wearing a _white_ dress, and under that, a _white_ lacy bralette. Scowling with embarrassment she quickly folds her arms over her chest, then turns and storms off back towards the villa, through the little orchard.

She ignores the calls of her name. She keeps going, picking up the pace until she’s running through the long grass, in between the peach and apricot trees. Her hair is in her eyes so she doesn’t see the tall, solitary figure walking in front of her. But he must have heard her, heard the huff and catch in her breath, because he turns round just in time to catch her, the book in his hand dropping to the floor, just as she’s about to run right through him.

“Woah, woah!”

Her nose bumps against his as she comes to an abrupt stop, her lips momentarily brushing against his stubbled chin. Stannis grasps her waist, holding her still; his large hands warm through the cool wetness of her soaked dress. The dampness of her palms seeps into the rolled up cuffs of his shirtsleeves. He stares down at her, still holding her, holding her still, a look of concern marring his dark brow. His gaze drifts down from her shocked, blushing face, down her pale neck where strands of her hair are clinging to her wet skin. Down to her heaving chest where he can see the distinct outline of her breasts, can clearly see two pink nipples poking through the nearly transparent and clinging fabric of her dress.

She feels his hands tighten on her waist, sees the way his throat moves as he swallows. But then he is releasing her, pulling away and taking a step back. Away from her. Putting distance between them. Her arms fall down to her sides, hanging limply for just a moment too long before she folds them over her chest. Covering herself.

“They threw me in the pool,” she says lamely. Quietly. Not looking at him.

“Who did?” His voice is raspy, like he hasn’t used it in a while and is only now figuring out how to use it again.

“Your brother, Loras, Margaery. Well, just your brother, technically, but I consider it a group effort. They all certainly had a big laugh at my expense, anyway” she rambles on, feeling stupid, but unable to stop talking. “I was perfectly happy sitting by the pool, but they didn’t listen.”

“That wasn’t very nice of them.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

She glances up at him, feeling her courage return to her. He looks embarrassed, agitated, but nevertheless rooted to the spot. His book lying forgotten on the ground by his feet. She takes pity on him.

“We have a cherry tree at home,” she says glancing up at the fruit trees, “we always have to put a net over it because of the birds.”

Around them the light is soft and dappled, creating pockets of shade in amongst the leafy branches and blushing fruit. Yesterday, she and Margaery had taken turns climbing a ladder, helping Vincent pick the ripest peaches and apricots. _Pick the_ _ones that are almost blushing with shame_ , he had said. Margaery had joked around; flirting effortlessly, picked one out, and asked, _Is this one blushing with shame, Vincent? No_ , he had said, _this one is too young still, youth has no shame, shame comes with age._

“Yes, I remember.”

“Remember what?”

 “The cherry tree in your garden.”

“Oh, you remember that do you?” She doesn’t know why she goads him. Doesn’t know what she’s trying to push him towards. “The cherry tree you remember. The cherry tree, but not me.”

“Sansa,” he looks startled, uncomfortable, and apologetic all at once.

“You forgot who I was,” she says accusingly, mouth set in a firm line, pouting slightly. _There, I’ve said it. Happy now?_ She wraps her arms more tightly around herself.

“No,” he shakes his head and moves towards her, “I just didn’t recognise you at first. You’re so—you’re…”

“Taller?” she supplies, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes.”

“Anything else?” She knows that if she were Margaery in this moment, she wouldn’t sound so innocent, so woefully and genuinely curious. She’d be confident. Alluring maybe. More like a woman and less like a girl.

He exhales shakily, and it sounds a little like he’s laughing. But not at her, because he’s not looking at her. He’s looking anywhere _but her_. She watches as he runs a hand distractedly through his hair, unconsciously mussing it. His other hand rests on his hip, angled away from her; his bare forearms already looking like they’ve caught a bit of sun; pale skin slowly becoming tan.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend—”

“It’s ok,” she says softly, interrupting him, “I forgive you.”

And she does. And more than that, she wants him to like her. She doesn’t want him to think she’s difficult or likely to hold grudges. She wants him to like her. Yes. But she’s not quite ready to ask herself exactly _why_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Does she like him? Does he like her? Stay tuned to find out!
> 
> Reviews, as always, are very much appreciated!
> 
> Cappy x


	3. Apricot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the lovely comments! Hope you guys like this new chapter ;)
> 
> (Disclaimer: I don't own anything apart from my OCs, but special shoutout to Call Me By Your Name for being a major influence. A beautiful book and film).

Maybe it started the moment he saw her. Or the moment he had recognised her. Or maybe it had been during that first grinding lunch when he had been seated one place down from her, far enough away to be out of her eye-line, but close enough to see the flash of her copper hair whenever she reached for something, or turned to speak to someone who wasn’t him.

He doesn’t know whether or not to deny it all — how much he wants to be near her, to touch her, to touch the pale knees that peep out from beneath her summer dresses, to brush his fingers along the inside of her wrists before she slips from the room, out of sight. He wants to reach for her, to pull her towards him and keep her there. He wants to linger over the way she crosses her ankles, leaning against a kitchen counter while the smell of cooking, of rosemary and garlic, rises in the air from the large pan simmering on the stove. He’s caught up in her, entangled by her every gesture. The way a smile crests her face, small and shy, then wide and blooming. The way she tucks her hair behind her ear, and the way it becomes untucked, slipping over her shoulder a moment later.

Here now, reclining on his bed, shielding himself from the high heat of the afternoon sun, and the trivial chatter of the other guests, he just has to close his eyes to see her. To remember. Sansa in that white dress. Wet and clinging. Sansa so soft and quietly raging. Sansa in that white dress. Droplets dripping from the ends of her hair, landing silently upon her bare arms, so tightly wound around herself: a ward against harm. Sansa in that white, wet dress, smelling of summer and skin; nearly naked and wholly innocent, and looking at him like…looking at him like…he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know, but with his eyes closed he can pretend it’s something like desire. A desire and a want that makes him hard just thinking about it.

At first, it didn’t occur to him that what had so totally panicked him when they had collided together, in amongst the fruit trees, was exactly what startles virgins on being touched for the very first time by the person they desire. That first touch stirs nerves in them that they never knew existed and produces far, far more disturbing pleasures than they are used to on their own. That’s what it had been like. Touching and being touched by Sansa. It had felt new and unfamiliar. A heightened, brightened un-reality that looks and feels very much like this world but can’t possibly be the same, because moments like that, exquisite, mindboggling moments like that just don’t happen. Least of all to him.

All this he should probably deny himself: these thoughts, these remembrances, these fixations. And he’s good at denying himself things, denying a multitude of emotions that accumulate inside of him. Loss. Loneliness. Longing. He thinks about denying himself this as well. Thinks about pushing these feelings down, down, burying them beneath a growing pile of wants not realised. Because it’s easy not acting on your feelings, on your desires, but what’s harder is supressing the need to think about them constantly, to not imagine what might happen if you were just a little bit bolder, a little bit surer of a favourable outcome.

But it’s just so easy to give into the magnetic pull of the fantasy, the endless daydreams, even though he knows that as much as there’s pleasure in thinking about her, _thinking about her with him_ , there’s pain too — the pain that comes with the realistic, rational reasoning that this can never happen. This can never be. You and her can never be. Will never be. So stop. Stop now while you still have the self-restraint to do so.

He should stop. He should. But he chooses not to.

He should think about something else. _Someone else._ He shouldn’t give into the shameful urge to palm at himself through his trousers, to undo his belt, to slip his too big, too rough hand beneath the waistband of his boxers. He shouldn’t want it to be her hand: small and soft and shyly uncertain but eagerly daring. He shouldn’t want these things, shouldn’t be _doing_ these things. But he does.

Alone in his bedroom, away from everyone else, away from her questioning stare, he gives in. He gives in with a low groan as his head thuds back against the wall behind him. He gives in as her form appears before his closed eyes. Her white dress. Wet and clinging. The curve of her breasts beneath it. The pink of her nipples. The pink of her lips. Opening, closing, breathing, in and out. Him tugging her forward, her wet dress pressed against his dry shirt; the heat of her against the heat of him; his hands in her hair, tangling; her hands on his shoulders, gripping; his lips against her neck, his lips on her lips, her hips nestling into his hips. Her, his, against, pressed, lips, teeth, grazed, crazed, her, her, her, _his_.

There is a moment of true euphoria when he cums, a blissful moan, a warmth seeping into his bones and lulling him into a false sense of ease so that when the inevitable feeling of shame washes over him it feels colder and more disapproving than he could ever have anticipated. He feels dirty now, his hand wet and still hidden beneath his boxers. He feels guilty, like he’s breeched her trust somehow. He’s thought about her in a way he’s sure she’d never want to be thought about, not by him.

_Fuck. Fuck. Shit._ He tries to shut out the encroaching and now not so distant memory of Sansa in her school uniform, tear-streaked and looking up at him with such unbridled trust and gratitude. He remembers, dear God he remembers it all now. And he hates himself for it. Hates what a letch he is. Hates his body for reacting to her like this. _For giving in._

Jerking into action, he hastily releases himself, shucks off his belt and trousers so that they slide off the bed and crumple to the floor, then he makes a beeline for the en-suite. _I’ve got to get a fucking grip_ , he says to himself, unbuttoning his shirt and throwing it over his shoulder in wayward frustration. His boxers come off next, abandoned on the bathroom floor, to be dealt with later.

He lets the shower thunder over his downturned head, the cool water a balm to his burning self-hatred. He doesn’t know how long he stands there, motionless, letting the water rush over him, pattering against his bare skin, sliding down his legs and then swirling down the drain. It could have been ten minutes or ten hours. He feels a little like he’s disassociating, like he’s not here. He’s not here but _here_ is exactly where he wants to be because _here_ is where she is.

He barely has a towel wrapped around his waist when there is a soft knock at his bedroom door. He freezes, hands gripping the rolled up hem of the towel, holding it in place. There is another knock and then the door is being cautiously opened and he hurries through the bathroom’s open doorway, towards this unknown, unwelcome visitor. He’s ready to angrily dismiss them, to tell them to come back when he’s decent, that no, he doesn’t want to go down and swim; he didn’t pack any swimming trunks. But all these words are halted by the sight of her. Sansa.

She’s standing there, wearing the light blue wrap dress he’d seen her in that morning and during lunch. It skims her thighs, a little above the knee, and cinches in at her waist with a neatly tied bow made of the same pastel fabric. In her hand is a tall glass of apricot juice, freshly squeezed and obviously meant for him. There’s a faint blush blossoming across her cheeks as she keeps her gaze averted, not looking at him and the way he shifts uncomfortably, ever mindful of the towel that covers him.

“I—we thought you might be thirsty,” she says, lifting her eyes to meet his.

She’s here. _Fucking hell, she’s here._ And he’s only wearing a towel. She’s here and not so very long ago he had been shamelessly jerking off to the thought of her wet and wanting in that white dress. Pressed up against him and falling apart in his arms as he—

He’s sure that the despair he aims at himself gives his features something bordering on impatience and unspoken rage. That she might mistake these as aimed at her never crosses his mind.

“Thanks,” he murmurs, gripping his towel in one hand as he uses the other to take the glass from her proffered hand. It distresses him to see her wilt beneath his pained stare, her eyes becoming downcast and her arms shifting to be held behind her back. It’s an almost cowering stance and it confuses him because surely it should be the other way round? _Him_ cowering before _her_. Begging forgiveness.

“I’m sorry,” she admits in a rush, frowning and worrying her lower lip, barely meeting his eyes; instead they ghost over his bare skin before landing fixedly on the folds of her blue dress. “I came at a bad time. I just—I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for how I spoke to you yesterday. I didn’t mean to get mad at you like I did; I don’t really know…I suppose it was because I was so worked up from before. You know, the pool thing. I’m never usually like that. So yeah, I just wanted to say that I’m sorry, and I’m sorry for running at you practically naked, because I feel like maybe you’ve been avoiding me? You left so suddenly, and… But maybe that’s all in my head, I don’t know…” She stares straight at him now, wide-eyed and hopeful. Eyes so impossibly blue. Blue like the blue of her summer dress.

He can feel the cool condensation of the glass against his hand, knows that his chest is still damp from the cool shower, but instead he can’t help feeling hot all over. Because her eyes are fire: sure and bright. Blue fire burning through him so that there’s nowhere left to hide. No possible hope of avoidance. Perhaps, in this, as with everything else, because he doesn’t know how to speak in code, he doesn’t know how to speak at all. He feels like a deaf and dumb person who can’t even use sign language. He could stammer out all manner of things so as not to speak his mind. So as not to speak _the truth_. That is the extent of his code. So long as he has breath to put words in his mouth, he can more or less get away with it. Otherwise, the silence between them will probably give him away — which is why anything, even the most sputtered nonsense, is preferable to silence. Silence will only expose him.

“Don’t be. Don’t be sorry. You’ve got nothing to be sorry about. And please don’t think I’m avoiding you.” _Even though I fucking am._ “I’m just—I’m not as outgoing as Robert or Renly. I like being on my own.”

“Oh,” she says, “I should go then, I’m disturbing you.”

“No! That’s—” he makes a little noise of frustration, momentarily letting go of the firm grip on his towel to run a hand through his wet hair. “That’s not what I meant. I didn’t mean you should go _now_. I was just trying…” He lets out a dejected sigh. “I was just trying to explain myself.”

A beat. A pause. _Say something._

“You’re just as I remember you.” Her voice is quiet, with a shy smile tugging at her lips.

“What?” The word comes out like a gush of air, whooshing through him and laden with more than just it’s immediate meaning.

“Hard to understand.”

He laughs, a brief and breathy _ha!_ As if to say, _yes, I can believe that._

“I never got to thank you for being there that day,” she says lightly, trying to mask the seriousness of her words.

He straightens, his back becoming more rigid, if that’s even possible. Because he feels like he’s been on high alert throughout this entire interaction. Balancing precariously upon a knife’s edge.

“I didn’t do it to be thanked,” he begins slowly, soberly. “I did it because it was the right thing to do. I did it because I didn’t think Cersei or Robert would have it in them to confront him about it.” He shakes his head angrily, a break in the calm and collected reserve he’s trying so hard to present. _That little shit._ That boy trying so hard to be a man, but the worst kind of men: men who take and take and don’t care when someone tells them _no_. He sighs and looks at her, feeling faintly ridiculous to be rehashing the past with her while he’s standing there in only a towel. “It’s thanks enough to know that he isn’t around anymore to hurt you.”

She nods, her eyes a little glassy as though she’s looking back through time, and not at him. Looking back on that day and the days and weeks that followed.

“He got expelled not long after. It wasn’t just me; there had been other girls too. I always think about how much worse it could’ve been. What might have happened if you hadn’t been there at the house that day to stop him. How much worse I might have felt if you hadn’t been there to give me your jacket and a lift home.” Her smile looks a little bit watery, trying so hard to smile away the bad memories.

“I’m glad I was there. I’m glad that I could help you that day.”

“You did. So much.”

They both look sheepishly down, not meeting each other’s eye. Bare feet against the wooden floor, nervously shifting or standing stock-still. He’s almost forgotten about the apricot juice in his hand, now not so cold as it was before. Looking for something to do, he takes a cautious sip. He’s not overly fond of excessively sweet things, but he is pleasantly surprised by the hint of tartness mixed in with the expected sweetness.

“It’s good, isn’t it?” Sansa smiles up at him from beneath lowered lashes.

“Hmm,” he nods, taking another sip and then impulsively offers it to her.

There’s a brief moment where she hesitates and panic darts up his spine, making him feel like a complete imbecile. _You fucking idiot. You bloody idiot._ But then she’s tentatively taking it from his hand and unconsciously placing her lips in the exact spot where his had been. He watches, entranced, as she tilts back her head a little, then licks her lips when she’s finished, hoping to catch the very last hint of that apricot sweetness. She hands the glass back to him and their fingers brush against each other for just a fraction of a second. And then no more.

“Thank you,” she says quietly, her eyes resting somewhere closer to his collarbone than his face. A steady fixation.

“You’re welcome.” His voice is just as quiet.

“I suppose we’re pretty much even now.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve seen me in a wet, practically transparent dress, and I’ve seen you in just a towel,” she explains, her lips puckering into a tiny smirk that is just so impossibly adorable that he just wants to pull her towards him and—

“Yes, I suppose we are. Even.”

He can feel the heated glare of the sun on his bare back, shining through the open window, casting shadows about the room. Sansa stands in his shadow. Stands in the shaded outline of his body, perfectly encased, as it stretches out through the open doorway, into the empty corridor. A gentle breeze drifts through the room, warm and airy, the softest touch against his shoulders and through her hair. Sansa shyly smiles up at him, and tucks an errant strand behind her ear.

_God, I’m so fucked._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> He's got it so bad! ;)
> 
> Reviews, as always, are very much appreciated!
> 
> Cappy x


	4. Cloudless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your comments! Hope you enjoy this chapter ;)
> 
> (Disclaimer: I don't own anything apart from my OCs, but special shoutout to Call Me By Your Name for being a major influence. A beautiful book and film).

You see someone, but you don’t really see him, he’s in the wings. Or you notice him, but nothing clicks, nothing “catches,” and before you’re even aware of a presence, or of something troubling you, he’s already gone, and you’re left scrambling to come to terms with something, which, unbeknownst to you, has been brewing for weeks under your very nose and bears all the symptoms of what you’re forced to call _I want. I want. I want him._

But he’s already gone. But you can’t stop caring, can’t stop wanting. But he’s gone. Out of your life. A minor player, exiting stage left. No reprising role. No Act Two. And so you have to forget. You have to move on. Or at least try to.

That’s what it had been like the first time. She was sixteen and he was, well, _older._ Impossible. A foolish crush, really. Born from a moment’s heroism. Born from a jacket placed over her trembling shoulders. Born from a careful hand hovering by her back, not quite touching, ushering her into his car so he could drive her home. Everything else about that day she has tried to forget, but not him. She would replay those moments with him in her head over and over again. Memories of memories of memories. And for such a long time he had been a well-loved but hazy outline, a silhouetted spectre, always cropping up in her thoughts whenever some jumped up boy-man in a Smiths T-shirt asked her, _do you wanna go for drink sometime?_

She definitely didn’t apply to, and subsequently go to UCL just because she knew he lived and worked in London. London with its eight million population, larger than some countries, with its hustle and bustle, its diversity, its architecture and history, London, a centre of art and design and she never once saw him. But that was to be expected really. Besides, she hadn’t just gone for him. She’d gone because she wanted to leave the small town life. She wanted to be a city girl, as cliché as that sounds. She wanted to go to museums on her days off: the Tate Modern, the V&A, the British Museum, the Courtauld Gallery with its Manets, Monets, and Degas. She wanted to walk around Bloomsbury. She wanted to take a seat in Gordon Square so she could read _To The Lighthouse_ or _A Room of One’s Own_ in the exact spot where the Bloomsbury Group used to hang out. She wanted there always to be something new to do, somewhere new to explore. And London gave her that.

Expense was inevitably an issue. Student housing was always going to be steeper in the capital than in the rest of the country, but for three years she had budgeted and saved, doing holiday work back at home in between semesters. Being a Fresher had been overwhelming at first — so many names to learn, the MHRA style guide to get to grips with, compulsory modules she would have rather done without. In second year, exams had been hell, but writing her dissertation in third year had been worse: the fire alarm had gone off in the library two days before hand-in and as she’d stood outside, sans laptop, sans USB, she’d seriously considered just going back to bed and never leaving if it turned out her twelve thousand word dissertation had been engulfed in a fiery inferno.

But despite all the stress, despite the deadlines, she does miss it. Misses living with Jeyne, Beth, and Marge in their poky student digs, with the fairy-lights strung up in the kitchen to distract from the peeling paint. Misses them screaming at the TV, mismatched wine glasses in their hands, drinking cheap rosé while watching _Love Island_. Misses balancing brunch on their knees, because they don’t have a table, readying themselves for a double bill of lectures at one.

It all went by so quickly.

“So tell me again. Please, Sansa, _please_.”

She turns over on the picnic blanket they spread out for sunbathing and looks at her best friend. Margaery pouts and simpers, batting her eyelashes until Sansa laughs, rolling onto her back and staring up at the cloudless sky. The smell of suntan lotion is in the air, rubbed into long legs and sprayed over freckling faces. Ice rattles over the soft sound of the breeze through the fruit trees, as Margaery reaches for her Negroni, still waiting for her answer.

“I already told you,” she replies at last, squinting up at the sun and moving her sunglasses down over her eyes.

“Yes, but tell me again.”

Closer to the house, Robert has initiated a poker game around the big patio table and is failing dismally. _You must all have cards up your sleeves, the pack of you,_ he booms, laughing at his own misfortune, _Lucky in cards, unlucky in love they say!_ Everyone is either playing or lounging in deck chairs; creased paperbacks left open of over their slumped chests as they snooze away in the midday sun. Everyone is outside. Everyone except one.

“He’d obviously just come out of the shower. He was in a towel. I don’t know what else you want me to say!” She laughs, breathy with exasperation as she stretches her bare feet past the edge of the blanket to slide through the long grass.

“Come on, San! Give me a reference point, at least. Give me something to work with!” Margaery rolls onto her stomach, ankles crossed and held aloft in the air, rocking back and forth, expectantly.

“Ok, fine,” she concedes with a little huff, because it’s better to give in now rather than risk Marge bringing it up later when he might be in earshot. _Here we go._ She takes a breath, bites down and worries her lip a little before resuming: “So you know that Agatha Christie adaptation the BBC did? _And Then There Were None_?”

“Ye-es?” She laces her fingers together, propping up her chin as if she’s about to hear something _terribly important._

“You know that scene with Aidan Tur—”

“Oh my God! Oh my God!” She squishes her cheeks together, the heel of her hands meeting at the perfect point of her chin. “Fuck! Really? That shirtless scene? Oh my God, San!”

“Not so loud!” Sansa chastises, trying not to look too suspicious as she peers round at the poker game and deck chairs. _It’s ok. We’re ok. He isn’t there._

“Oh my God,” Margaery mouths back at her, eyes widening dramatically.

“Are you happy now?”

“Babe, I am _intrigued_ is what I am! Aidan Turner, huh? That is a bold reference to make, bold indeed.” She takes a thoughtful sip of her Negroni, jiggling the ice around as she raises her eyebrows. “So he’s got a bit of chest hair going on then?”

Sansa blushes, and then blushes because she’s blushing. She turns over on her side, head downturned, avoiding Margaery’s all-pervasive gaze, so she can trace a finger along the chequered pattern of the picnic blanket.

“Yep,” she says, popping the P and pushing up her sunglasses.

“You know, I read somewhere that they have to shave Aidan down a bit, because he’s actually _hairier_ IRL than he is in _Poldark_. Or wax him, or something, I dunno. God, what a beautiful man! Do you think I could get that job?”

“Well, they do say a degree in the humanities equips you for a multitude of career possibilities.”

“They do say that, don’t they?”

They hold each other’s gaze, lips compressed tightly to stifle their smiles. But this faux show of seriousness doesn’t last long: the corners inevitably twitch upwards; their mirth breaking free with matching giggles and titters. Sansa sighs lazily, stretching her arms above her head, one hand clasping the other’s wrist, blocking out the blaze of the Italian sun, if only for a moment.

“Who’da thunk it, ay? Sexy Bod Stannis. Stannis “Sexy Bod” Baratheon. Sexy—”

“I didn’t say he was _sexy_!” she interrupts, arms dropping, heart thud-thud-thudding because surely this particular conversation has come to a close? Hasn’t it?

“ _Babe_ , yeah you did!” Margaery nods frantically, like an over-excited puppy that has just been told _walkies!_ She is obviously enjoying this, much to Sansa’s embarrassment. “By comparing Stannis Bloody Baratheon to Aidan Fucking Turner you are saying, by default, that he is sexy!”

“The observation was purely anatomical! I was just giving a you an accurate point of reference like _you_ asked!”

“Sure you were.” Her friend of many years narrows her big brown eyes shrewdly for just a fraction of a second before relaxing into a fanciful smile; “This is good though, you can have _Surprisingly Sexy Stannis_ and I can have the charming and devilishly handsome Vincent.”

She doesn’t know how to respond. Doesn’t know whether to feign indifference, to agree or disagree. Whether or not to laugh along with a twinkle in her eye and a quirk of her lips, the way Margaery would have done if their positions were reversed. But she doesn’t get a chance to do anything. Doesn’t get a chance to react at all, in fact.

“Speak of the devil,” Marge whispers, jutting her chin upwards, looking over Sansa’s shoulder.

She freezes. For a brief second she ponders the possibility that it’s Vincent she’s talking about, but then dismisses it just as quickly because _Vincent is already outside_ , winning at cards, sharing stories and trading jokes. No, she wasn’t taking about him.

So she turns and looks. And there he is. Tall, dark, and squinting in the sunlight.

“He’s taken Renly up on his offer then,” observes Margaery, casting Stannis a cursory glance before flipping over onto to her back, loose curls bouncing.

He’s wearing swimming trunks, evidently not his, because she remembers Renly crooning over those Hugo Boss shorts on ASOS not that long ago; the navy blue ones with the white waist-ban and _BOSS Hugo Boss_ emblazoned on the bottom right-hand corner. She can tell he’s feeling self-conscious, but maybe that’s just because she’s watching him so intently, seeing things that would be hidden from a more casual observer. But she sees it. Sees the way his shoulders hitch up; the way he tugs at the towel hanging over one of them; the way he glances at his casual spectators, sceptically, as if half expecting them to burst into laughter. But for the most part, they don’t pay him much attention. Other than a few _ciaos,_ they are too engrossed in their game, too busy dozing to say, _hey, what the hell do you think you’re doing? What business do you have looking that goddamn fine, huh?_

The thud her heart gave when she saw him, standing in that open doorway, both terrifies and thrills her. She feels afraid whenever he shows up, afraid when he doesn’t, afraid when he looks at her, more frightened when he doesn’t.

He’s looking at her now, though. Staring right at her. Blue on blue. The North Sea on the Aegean. But then it’s over. He doesn’t even smile. Just averts his gaze. Looks beyond her, through her, over her head, past the fruit trees, and towards the swimming pool.

She tries not to feel too dejected as she reverts back to her previous position: back against the blanket, looking up at the sky, contemplating clouds, wondering if she’ll ever see one. Cloudless blue. Endless blue. Blue, blue, blue, his eyes are blue. But not that blue, no, a darker, moodier blue. A different blue entirely.

Beside her, Margaery is crunching on ice, slurping up the last of her Negroni with a smack of her lips. “I’m going to get another, do you want one?” she asks, rising up on her elbows.

“Um, no, I’m good. Thanks, though.”

“More for me, then,” she says, smirking mischievously. And then she’s getting up, heading towards the house, towards the poker players, hips swaying, smile in place, ready to charm. Eyes already locked on her unassuming target.

Sansa shakes her head and smiles, bemused. She looks towards the orchard and the pool just beyond it. She sighs, her bare feet sliding along the picnic blanket, knees slowly rising. She knocks them together, thoughtfully, unsure whether to stay put or to get up and go. But go where? _You know where._ She thinks about their meeting in the orchard, thinks about how she’d yielded to his touch, how she’d almost leant into it, as if to say, _Don’t stop._ She wonders if he noticed. Did he notice that she was not just ready to yield but to mould herself to his body? She’d practically swooned. Why had she swooned? And could it happen so easily — just let him touch her somewhere and she’d go totally limp and will-less?

For the past few nights, when it had been too hot, when the sweat had beaded on her brow, she’d lain awake thinking about him. Thinking about the curve of his shoulders and the span of his chest, the length of his neck and the taste of his lips, every inch of him, if she’s being honest. And she has this fantasy, and the fact that she isn’t sharing a bedroom with Margaery, that instead their rooms are separated by a shared bathroom, plays quite well into this fantasy. The fantasy of him leaving his room and stepping into hers; of him slipping under her covers; of him undressing her, without asking, because she doesn’t need to be asked; of him making her want him more than she ever thought possible, with his mouth, with his hands, gently, softly; of him working his way into her body, gently and softly, heeding the words she has been silently, unconsciously rehearsing for years now, _Please, don’t hurt me_ , which of course means, _Hurt me all you want._

It makes her hate herself for feeling so hapless, so thoroughly invisible, so smitten, so naïve. _Just say something, just touch me, just look at me long enough and see the tears well in my eyes_. Because all he needs to do is knock on her door at night and see that she’s already left it ajar for him. _But I have no hold on him_ , she thinks, nothing to offer, nothing to lure him by. _I’m nothing. I’m just a kid to him._ But all she really wants is one night with him, just one night, one night to see what it’s all about — one hour even — if only to determine whether she wants him for another night after that. What she doesn’t realise is that wanting to test desire is nothing more than a ruse to get what we want without admitting that we want it.

Maybe if she were bolder, surer, somehow not herself, she’d be able to pursue him without a care, without a thought. Margaery could do it. Marge can do anything. Sansa’s head is so packed full of worries, consequences, and unfavourable outcomes, that’s her problem. Overthinking. Is it because she is afraid of what might happen? Or is she afraid that he will laugh at her, tell everyone, or ignore the whole thing on the pretext that she is too young to know what she is doing? Or is it because if he so much as suspects — and anyone who suspects would of necessity be on the same wavelength — he might be tempted to act on it? Or would she prefer a lifetime of longing provided they both keep this little Ping-Pong game going: not knowing, not-not knowing, not-not-not knowing? Just be quiet, say nothing, and if you can’t say “yes,” don’t say “no,” say “maybe.”

In a decisive move, she gets up, palms sliding against her linen shorts as she turns to face the orchard. The orchard and what lies beyond. She starts walking, and she pretends that that’s all it is, just walking. No destination in mind. Walking through the peach and apricot trees, through the long grasses, past patches of sunlight filtering through the leaves. No destination in mind. _Liar._ She keeps walking, slowly, meandering, prolonging the inevitable. She holds an arm out so she can touch the trees, so she can feel the bark beneath her fingertips. She takes a leaf in her hands and tears it, imitating the game with the daisy. _He loves me. He loves me not…_ But whatever the outcome, don’t stop. Keep walking. And she does, she keeps walking until she sees him, swimming lengths in the pool, hair wet and body glistening.

How effortless and free the movement of his shoulder blades each time he turns, starting a lap anew. How thoughtlessly they catch the sun. Do they taste of the chlorine that infuses the pool? Or of his suntan lotion? Or of something that is uniquely him? Uniquely Stannis. Maybe it’s silly to think this way, to think about things she’ll never know. No matter how much she wants to.

“Sansa,” he splutters, water splashing into his mouth as he comes to a sudden stop, mid stroke. Eyes wide and blinking.

“Stannis.” Her voice is small, timid but smiling.

She is in heaven, alone with him; a shot of tonic that spills over everything. Just a word, a gaze, and she is in heaven.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a cliffhanger, but that only means we'll be switching to Stannis' pov in the next chapter ;)
> 
> Side Note:
> 
> \- If you are so inclined, do google image "Aidan Turner And Then There Were None" and you'll know exactly how I imagine shirtless Stannis ;)
> 
> Reviews, as always, are very much appreciated!
> 
> Cappy x


	5. Circling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cheers for all the lovely comments :) Hope you enjoy this new chapter!
> 
>  (Disclaimer: I don't own anything apart from my OCs, but special shoutout to Call Me By Your Name for being a major influence. A beautiful book and film).

He’d felt a little like a caged animal, confined to his room, his body inert yet thrumming with an energy too big to be contained by those four walls. Because he should be downstairs, enjoying the sunshine, unburdened and boozing with the others, shouldn’t he? Because that would be normal behaviour: being downstairs, socialising, drinking Negronis and hopefully beating Robert at cards. That would be normal. And yet, would that be normal for him? Could he honestly just swan down there, lazy smile in place, shirt unbuttoned because _God, this heat_ , and take up a seat amongst them? Pretending as if he isn’t exactly the very person people always proclaim him to be? Stiff, solemn, strangely withdrawn, and yet perversely quick to offend.

No. He couldn’t.

But it had been so stifling in there and he’d felt boxed in, staring at those white washed walls, waiting for something, _something_ to happen. Because he’d wanted a realisation of some sort, an epiphany, an inner voice telling him, _you’ve got this all wrong._ But of course, that wasn’t going to happen. You can’t un-feel feelings. He wishes you could. Things would be so much simpler if that were true. But it isn’t. How can it be when she is who she is, when she looks at him like she does — like a silken dagger to the chest, wounding yet caressing, without even knowing.

It’s either startlingly obvious or maddeningly unclear. Whatever is going on, he pushes it down, he buries it, only acknowledging the fact that he needs to _get out_.

He tries to make it seem like an unconscious choice when he averts his gaze, when he finally comes downstairs, borrowed swimming trunks on and a towel over his shoulder. But he knows exactly where she is without even looking. And when the inevitable crack in the veneer occurs, when he inevitably looks her way, he tells himself that it shouldn’t mean much that she is staring right back at him. But it does. It means everything. But he looks away. He walks away.

Now in the pool, swimming laps, he feels the fire of his feelings subside a little, replaced by the monotonous back and forth, by the cool water washing over his warm skin. It’s all he is now, just a body in water. And it’s all he wants to be. Just a body: two arms, two legs, and all the rest of it. No thoughts, no feelings, no lingering on how long her legs had looked, or how blue her eyes had been. Just swimming. A moving meditation through clear, chlorinated, cocoon like water. The laboured trance, the rhythm of his breathing, it does its work, unwinding his restless feelings into nothingness.

For a little while, he is nothing but that body, with time and space suspended until someone calls him for lunch. So when he sees a figure coming towards him, from the corner of his eye, he thinks, _but I haven’t been swimming for that long._ And there’s a fair degree of confusion along with a disgruntled determination to just keep swimming regardless. These feelings don’t last long. When he sees that it’s her, everything stops. He splutters with eyes stinging, he comes to an abrupt halt in the middle of the pool. He stares. Dumbfounded.

He says her name. She says his back.

He thinks she must be developing a strange habit of always appearing whenever he’s trying his damnedest not to think about her. Does she know the effect she has on him? The fire she ignites. Fire like fear, like panic, like one more minute of this and he’ll die if he doesn’t touch her, if doesn’t pull her towards him and kiss her, but he’d just soon as not kiss than kiss her now.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt you.” She tucks some hair behind her ear, red gold glinting in the sun, and shifts slightly, leaning on one leg, and then the other.

He shakes his head, because all he can think of saying, though he can’t bring himself to say it, is, _You could never be an interruption. To be with you. To be alone with you. On my bed. In your bed. Anywhere. Just ask me if I want to and see the answer you’ll get, just don’t let me say no. Don’t let me say no._

His arms move out in front of him, his legs kick languidly below. He watches as she slips out of her pale yellow shorts, revealing bikini bottoms and the whole expanse of lovely long legs. Her face is downturned, concentrating, with her sunglasses still perched on her head. _I should look away_ , he thinks. _Look away. Look away._ But he feels that fire of desire flare up inside him as she sweeps her hair over her shoulder, neck bent, fair and dewy, as she un-tucks, unbuttons her white blouse. There’s a sweet little lemon embroidered on the breast pocket, and the sight it makes his chest ache, makes him breathe shakily through his nose, mouth clamped shut. Because these little details, these little details which detail _her_. Because he feels the fire, feels it burning. Fire like a pleading that says, _Please, please tell me I’m wrong, tell me I’ve imagined all this, because it can’t possibly be true for you as well, and if it’s true for you too, then please, tell me what I should do._

She piles up her clothes by the pool’s edge, placing her sunglasses on top. Then her hands are in her hair, twisting, winding it up and out of the way, and _Oh God_ , how he wishes those were his hands. Stroking, touching. She’s all in white now; white like the first time, white like innocence and purity. He supresses a moan, a groan, he doesn’t know what. He tries not to grind his teeth. She just wants to swim, same as him. But no, not the same, not now, because now his wants have entirely changed _._ He wants _her_. So much that it’s a struggle to stay afloat; it’s a struggle to keep his eyes off of her as she slips into the pool, the clear view of her lithe, young body becoming distorted by the water.

He’s still looking. There was never any hope of _not looking_. But now she is looking back. Blinking slowly, lips slightly parted as she swims a little closer, water lapping against her bare shoulders. He can’t move, doesn’t know if he wants to. Soft tendrils of hair curl about her ears, grazing her flushed cheeks. He wants to touch; he wants to kiss, he wants to—

“It’s so good to get out of the heat,” she murmurs, swiping a wet hand across her brow. Droplets slide down her cheek, still flushed, down her neck, slow, slow, then fast, disappearing where her body meets the water.

She is swimming around him, unknowingly circling. The water ripples: the movement made by their bodies, the undulating noise of it clear in their ears but otherwise lost amongst the buzzing of the cicadas and the gentle breeze that quivers through the fruit trees. Overhead the sky is clear and cloudless, bright with the noonday sun, the only mar on its canvas being the wispy trails of a faraway aeroplane.

“Yes, it was too stuffy in my room.”

She worries her lip and her eyes lower to scan the water. He lets himself sink a little, his chin dipping, becoming wet. He doesn’t stop looking at her.

“You’re always hiding up there,” she says softly, her gaze lifting to meet his. Then there’s a pause. “We miss you downstairs.” Her lips quirk up a little, a shy self-deprecating smile, but then she looks away.

He scoffs, bitter and cutting.

“No, they don’t.”

She is silent for a moment, letting just enough time go by for him to register that her response might not be entirely casual or carefree.

“I think you’re wrong.” Her voice is small but defiant, her lips pursed and her gaze direct.

“You can think whatever you like,” he says, soft and harsh, all at once.

With a twist of his hips he abruptly turns away from her, towards the pool’s edge and then along it, one foot occasionally bumping against the tiled wall. She stays still but he knows she is watching. He can feel the weight of her gaze between his shoulder blades, can feel it trying to seek him out, trying to ensnare his eyes with hers, but he won’t give her the satisfaction. _Self-preservation_ , he tells himself.

But what can she mean? Does she know what she’s saying? Does she know that even the barest indication that she feels _something_ for him, no matter how innocent or minuscule, has the power to undo him completely? Her gentle concern; the flush of her cheeks; the way she ducks her head, not quite looking at him, because maybe, _maybe_ looking for her is just as weighted as it is for him? Or maybe there’s nothing there, and maybe he’s invented the whole thing. But something tells him, quiet as that voice may be, that she is different when she’s around him. Different in the way she speaks; in the way that words are toyed with but at the last moment held back.

He can hear her coming towards him now, can feel the movement in the water, lapping against his shoulders. He takes a fortifying breath, then closes his eyes and tries not to think about the soft line of her body, swimming, coming closer: the length of her legs, the kick of her feet, the curve of her hips, and the place on her waist where his hands long to settle. He’s been trying so hard to keep his distance, to stay away, to maintain some sense of resolve. But it’s useless, because she has him. She may be completely and utterly unaware of the fact, but it doesn’t matter. She has him. She has him.

“I think Carina likes you.”

“What?”

He spins around, water sloshing, splashing up against Sansa’s neck as her eyes momentarily screw shut, bracing herself. Her sudden closeness startles him, jarring him so much that he almost forgets everything but her. Just Sansa: floating in front of him, tendrils of hair damp and dripping, dripping down the soft swell of her—

He knows his mouth is open, but no words are coming out. _What was it she was saying_ , he asks himself, scanning her face but getting lost in way she wets her lips and holds his gaze. Steady and searching.

“Yesterday, at dinner, after you’d gone up…”

She falters and looks a little sheepish, as though she’s breaking some code of honour by telling him this, or as if the whole notion of Carina _liking_ him is somehow horribly embarrassing to her. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what she’s thinking as she tells him this. Doesn’t know what the flush of her cheeks means. All he can do is keep listening, even as he feels himself bump up against the pool’s edge, elbows skimming the tiled wall behind him.

“She seemed surprised when Robert told her you weren’t really one for dating,” she continues, regaining her earlier boldness. “She said…” He waits. “She said that there’s something about a stiff and proper Englishman that feels like a challenge.” The last part comes out hushed, secret-like, with her eyes boring intensely into his.

He tries to think about Carina, Alessandra’s younger sister, who possesses all the confidence and allure that he knows Sansa’s friend, Margaery, aspires to but isn’t quite world-weary enough to obtain. He tries to picture her face though all he can see is Sansa’s, because, to be honest, he hadn’t ever noticed her interest in him. In hindsight, maybe now he sees it: the coy smiles, the dark eyes giving him a once over, the draping of her body over the back of his chair as she pauses to listen to some anecdote on the way to the kitchen. She is an attractive woman, to be sure, and she’s very much aware of that fact. She is aware of her charm, aware of her intellect, aware of her beauty, and that awareness, that knowingness, well, it reminds him a little too much of Mel at times. And he can’t even entertain the thought of going back to that kind of arrangement, let alone make a conscious effort to do so, because even if their similarities are purely a fabrication of his imagination, it is enough that the association is there. He doesn’t want that. He wants something more, but what exactly _more_ entails, he isn’t quite sure. Though maybe he’s starting to understand.

“She must like you,” Sansa repeats, attempting an air of nonchalance, though there is carefulness in her tone that seeps through into her words, perplexing him. “So you see,” she continues, smiling a little too brightly, “you should really come down more often, because I’m sure if you like her—”

“You have no idea what I like,” he snaps. “No idea.”

He tries, misguidedly, to sound arch and mysterious, as though referring to a realm of human existence about which someone like her wouldn’t have the slightest clue. But he only manages, to his ear, to sound peevish and a tad hysterical. He doesn’t want to think about how he must sound to her. It’s bad enough seeing the way her smile drops, replaced by a startled frown.

A less canny reader of the human soul might see in his persistent denials the terrified signs of a flustered admission about Carina scrambling for cover. A cannier observer, however, would consider it a lead-in to an entirely different truth: push open the door at your own peril, but believe him when he tells you that you don’t want to hear this. Maybe you should go away now, while there’s still time.

Whatever she was going to say has evaporated into the air, leaving nothing behind but the quickened breath from both their chests, rising and falling, practically in tandem. There are no words, only looks, only her staring, unsure, and him staring back, just as uncertain. _How did our bodies get so close_ , he asks himself, back pressed against the tiled wall, tracing the groves beneath his fingertips.

The silence lingers on and it’s like a hand twisting his insides. He knows that if she so much as shows a sign of suspecting the truth, he’ll make every effort to cast her adrift right away. If, however, she suspects nothing, then his flustered words will have left her marooned just the same. In the end, he is happier with her thinking he does want Carina. He’d rather she not push him further and have him tripping over himself. Speechless, he would undoubtedly admit things he hasn’t mapped out for himself or doesn’t know he has in him to admit. No, better she should never know. He can live with that. He can always, always live with that. It doesn’t even surprise him how easy it is for him to accept.

“I’m sorry,” she says at last, and she looks it, her regret is written all over her lovely face. “You’re right, I don’t have any idea. You’re right.”

She is backing away from him now, still searching the blank stare of his face which he has so carefully schooled it into impassivity. _You won’t find anything_ , he wants to say. _You can’t. I won’t let you._ Her brows lower and she inhales shakily, suddenly turning, legs kicking out behind her as she swims away. Without her looking the remorse floods over his features.

“Sansa,” he calls.

“I think it must be lunchtime now,” she says, her words coming out somewhat hurried as she hauls herself out of the pool.

She stands by the edge, her back to him, body dripping, as if contemplating her next move. He sees her glance at his folded towel, one arm crossing over the other, holding herself, one heel lifting, almost anxiously. And then she is scooping up her pile of clothes — her shorts, shirt, and sunglasses — into her wet arms. And then she is walking briskly away from him, long legs glistening in the sun, through the orchard and back towards the house.

She doesn’t look back. But he keeps looking, hoping that maybe she might. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh no! Stannis, when will you learn that pushing people away isn't a good solution to your problems??
> 
> Reviews, as always, are very much appreciated!
> 
> Cappy x


	6. Sorrento

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Helloooo, I'm back! I had this chapter half finished for ages but now it's finally done! Hope you enjoy and thanks for the lovely comments from last chapter :)

She should learn to avoid him, sever each tie, one by one, like a neurosurgeon splitting one neuron from another, one thought-tormented wish from the next. _I need to wean myself off of him_ , she thinks. A little bit at a time, like an addict, one day, one hour, one minute, one agonising second. It could be done. It _needs_ to be done if she’s going to retain even a semblance of sanity. Because she knows that there is no future in this. She tells it to herself over and over again as she walks back towards the villa, legs still dripping wet though her shoulders are almost dry.

Above her, the sun wafts down a hot caress; filtering through the leafy green and warming her already flushed face. Against her chest, her clothes feel pleasantly cool where they have soaked up the dampness of her pool soaked skin. How did this happen? How had she got it all so wrong? She’d only wanted to swim. _Liar._ Without meaning to, she lets out a despondent huff as her bare feet tear hurriedly through the long grass. A tight uneasiness has settled itself somewhere beneath her ribcage; its constricting fingers reaching up towards her collarbone making her throat feel dry as she swallows. _Don’t cry, don’t you dare cry._

She blinks furiously, sniffing sharply; the following exhale coming out shaky, quaking along with the nearly thunderous thud, thud, thud of her heart.

“Stupid, _stupid_ ,” she whispers, rubbing one eye angrily with the heel of her hand.

When she reaches the patio she can see that the table is in the process of being set for lunch: Carina is putting out the cutlery, her long hair spilling over her shoulder in one glossy, chocolate-y wave; beside her, Margaery is clutching wine glasses, chatting away to Vincent, who is standing close-by, his empty hands tucked leisurely into his pockets. All three of them turn at her approach, offering her friendly smiles and casual _ciaos,_ which she quickly returns despite the welling of eyes, barely kept at bay. And she maintains this smile, sheepish and brave-faced as it is, even as she enters the house, because there, through the open doorway of the kitchen, is Robert, Alessandra, Tania, and Aurelio leaning against counters and hovering over steaming pans. They call out to her. _Ciao bella! Cara mia! Sansa!_

A shy wave is all she grants them, so desperate she is to reach her room and promptly face-plant herself onto the bed. She tries to avert her gaze, lest someone takes hold of it, causing her to be dragged into a conversation she really doesn’t have the presence of mind for. Her eyes flicker from empty serving dishes laid out on the kitchen table, to the sunlit hallway, to the creaking staircase at the end of it, all within the space of a few seconds before she hurries onwards. She catches a glimpse of the men raising their eyebrows in her direction, evidently perplexed by her skittishness. The women, on the other hand, let her go without interfering, as if sympathising with someone who has been hurt enough already.

Her clothes drop to the floor as her knees sink into the bed; with a twist of her body she turns on her side, one cheek pressed against the soft, sun warmed covers. _It’s almost lunchtime, you can’t stay here like this forever_ , she tells herself between drawn out huffs. _Just a little longer._ Sansa lets her eyes drift towards the open window, the open shutters, and the way the light dances, picking up dust in its rays, which twirl and twirl in the soft, summer breeze. She can her the sound of plates being brought outside, voices rising and falling, laughing and directing, the pat, pat, slap, of sandals against ceramic tiles. But it’s the sound of the staircase creaking with the weight of cautious footsteps that causes her to sit up abruptly, head turning to face the door, her ears straining and heartbeat thudding. And for one wild moment, she imagines Stannis pausing at her door, knocking, and then issuing forth some kind of impassioned, heartfelt confession of love and desire. She imagines pulling him in by the shirt-collar, and then pressing her lips to his in a hurried kiss that doesn’t end until they’re both a tangle of limbs lying lengthways on her bed.

But he doesn’t stop outside her room. _Of course he doesn’t. Why would he?_

Still sitting on the bed, Sansa grips her wrists and hides her eyes in the crook of her elbow; maybe she’s hiding from him, him or her own feelings of embarrassment, she doesn’t know. But it’s almost lunchtime, and here she is, in nothing but her white bikini when she should be getting changed.

Her shorts are a little crumpled, her shirt a little damp. It doesn’t matter. When she opens her bedroom door, turning towards the staircase at the end of the corridor, he’s already descending — hurried steps and hair somewhat in disarray from the towel that’s been rubbed through it in haste. He doesn’t notice her, which is good, she thinks. But just to be safe she waits a beat before following, bare feet quiet against the hardwood, her heels barely touching the floor.

An Italian meal, even an informal lunch, is a lively sequence of sensations in which the crisp alternate with the soft and yielding, the pungent with the mild, the variable with the staple, the elaborate with the simple. It’s easy to get lost in these sensations, and that’s exactly what Sansa wants. But even though she doesn’t wish to feel his eyes on her as she takes a seat next to Margaery, she still does. _He’s thinking what an awkward weirdo I am, isn’t he. God, I shouldn’t be so self-obsessed._ And yet, in between forkfuls of roasted peppers and anchovies, falling twists of spaghetti aio e oio, and flaking pieces of sea bass with fennel, she catches him looking.

“This is all so delicious,” exclaims Margaery, reaching over for the radicchio and warm borlotti bean salad; the rose charm on her silver bangle clinks against Stannis’ wine glass as she does so, causing him to reach out to steady it even though there is no chance of it falling; long, masculine fingers against the sloping stem of the glass. Sansa tries to hide a smile; she doesn’t know why she finds this amusing, she just does. _He so strange, I can’t explain it._

“Yes, these peppers especially,” agrees Renly, sucking the oil from his thumb. He gifts Alessandra with one of those megawatt Baratheon smiles, all charm and effortless ease, the kind of smile Sansa never sees on Stannis and has trouble imagining ever gracing his face. _He’s so different from them._

“The peppers were Carina,” replies Alessandra, her dark eyes crinkling up in the corners; her smile is all warmth and quiet confidence, and maybe it’s the Mediterranean air, or her Italian blood, or maybe it’s something just innately her. Whatever it is, it has Robert enthralled.

“Well done to Carina, then,” he says, though his hand is on Alessandra’s shoulder, affectionately squeezing it, his thumb brushing against the nape of her neck.

The younger woman smirks; catching the heated way Robert presses a kiss against her sister’s ear. “Over here, the word we use for a vegetable dish is _contorno_ , which literally means contour.” She raises her glass and takes a sip from her white wine. “It’s a good translation, because it is the choice of vegetable which defines a meal,” her other hand rises, fingers meeting as she gestures out her point; “gives a meal shape, flavour, texture, the colours of the season, si?”

“I could listen to you talk about food all day, darling,” croons Vincent, giving her a lopsided grin as he tops up Margaery’s glass for her.

Sansa glances at her friend and catches her tight-lipped smile, the way she flips her hair over her shoulder and takes a large gulp of her wine, eyes peeking up at Carina and then looking away.

“Do you cook, Vincent? I’ve only seen you pour out wine and fix negronis, and I’m not sure that counts.” Margaery’s voice has a sensual depth and a coquettish hum at the end that causes the object of her attention to raise his eyebrows and bluster out an amused laugh.

“I have been known to, on occasion.” His eyes are teasing as he looks at her and Sansa can almost feel her friend melt beside her. But Margie is way to cool and collected for that, it’s enough just to know she’s piqued his interest.

Their casual flirtation goes on, egged on by the presence of a potential rival in the form of Carina. It’s the same old routine, one that Sansa has long been privy to, and it’s got everything to do with a whole load of confidence and the smallest hint that you give a shit, but not too much that the object of your desire wholly believes it. And she’ll get the guy, because she always does. But even for Margaery, Vincent seems like a bit of an impossibility: the quintessential older man, suave and sophisticated, knowing things you’ve yet to know but willing to teach you anyway. If it were Sansa, she’d feel out of her depth.

“So, Sansa.” Robert’s booming voice instantly draws her out of her musings and her eyes meet his with a few startled blinks. “I haven’t had a chance to congratulate you on your degree! A first, your mum and dad must be so proud.”

“Oh, well, yes, I suppose they are.” She smiles blushingly, uncomfortable with the attention suddenly shifting to her. “I worked really hard on my dissertation, so…” She shrugs, struggling to find the words. _I did work hard. I am proud. It’s ok to say it._

“What was it on?” Stannis’ voice is clear and probing, and for a moment she gets a little lost in the way the space between his eyebrows has become creased in concentration. Or maybe it’s confusion, because she hasn’t answered him. “Your dissertation?”

For a horrifying moment her mind goes blank. “Uh…” _How can I forget? Twelve thousand words! An eight page bibliography, admittedly double-spaced, but still! Homer! The Odyssey! Come on, remember—_

She swallows, takes a breath and smiles sheepishly: “It was on masculinist and feminist readings of _The Odyssey_. I, um, I read Emily Wilson’s translation last year, as secondary reading for one of my modules, which was really amazing, and that sort of spurned me on to look at different approaches to translation; how the same story can be told differently, depending on who’s telling it. That kind of thing.”

“These Stark women, blessed with brains and beauty!” Robert’s praise makes her cheeks burn even more. It’s well-meaning she knows, but for some reason she’d rather he go back to trying to low-key take Alessandra to bed, than continue talking.

“You did Classics?” His voice again, cutting through it all. Pinning her to her seat like an arrow from a bow. _Cupid’s arrow…no, shut up. Stop._

“English and Ancient History.” Her eyes lock onto Stannis’ and she can’t seem to look away, can’t stop talking: “He’s never said it out loud, but I know my dad kind of thinks a humanities degree is waste of time. Maybe he’s right, I don’t know.” She laughs a little, but the sound is hollow, and she knows he notices because she sees that little crease again, the one between his eyebrows. Concentration or confusion, she’s not sure.

“How about a drive to Sorrento?” interrupts Aurelio, unknowingly, as he begins stacking up plates at the opposite end of the table; knives and forks scrape and knock together as he piles them onto the top plate.

“There should be a market on today,” agrees Tania. “It’s still early enough.”

And so, after the plates are cleared and the wine glasses drained, they begin assembling themselves around the various cars that are parked in the drive. It makes sense to have at least one Italian in each car so that no one gets lost, so Sansa and Margaery go with Tania and Aurelio, Carina follows Loras and Renly to their Alfa Romeo rental, and Alessandra, Stannis, and Vincent move towards Robert’s Maserati. There’s a little delay as Margaery rushes back inside the villa, having forgotten her sunglasses, so Sansa lingers by the front steps, one hip leaning against the wall as she watches Robert huff and puff as he tries to push forward the front seat of his car so that Stannis and Vincent can get in the back.

“I know it goes fast, Bob, but is it really worth having a car with only has one set of doors?” laughs Vincent, one hand falling down on Stannis’ tense shoulder as if trying to bring him into the joke. But he doesn’t laugh, he just looks around, impatient, until he catches her watching him and she has to look away, cheeks reddening.

“You like him, don’t you?” Carina’s voice is a soft whisper paired with a slightly cocked head and teasing but well-meaning smile, as she comes to stand next to her.

Sansa blinks back at her, brain simultaneously freezing and going into overdrive. “Who—who do you mean?”

Carina’s smile broadens and she inclines her head in the direction of Robert’s car. “He likes you too, you know—more than you do, I think.”

Sansa had never been visited by such powerful contradictions before. This was agony, for something like utter disbelief was brimming over inside of her. _That’s not right. How can he like me? He doesn’t, not like that. I know he doesn’t._ She tries to still her mind and think of the vista before her, the winding drive and the tall cypress trees, the way people about to be given a polygraph like to visualise serene and placid settings to disguise their agitation. But before she can even begin to think of anything to say in reply, Margaery comes bounding out, hair bouncing and sunglasses in place.

“Hey, I found them, let’s go!” Her friend slips her arm through Sansa’s and all but skips towards Tania and Aurelio’s car. “Maybe we can find some nice postcards to send back home? I should at least send one to my grandma.”

The journey doesn’t take long and soon enough they are navigating through the narrow cobbled streets of Sorrento and dodging mopeds, looking for a place to park the cars. Though not particularly big, Sorrento stands in fine position high above the Mediterranean, with its multi-coloured buildings and backdrop of Mount Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples. It is a small city of deep, cool churches, pretty cloisters, elegant gardens and lemon and orange groves running high above the seashore.

Once out of the car, Sansa and the others wander through the main square, Piazza Tasso, until they come across the bustling market, still a few hours from closing down. Stacked up in wooden crates there are hundreds of courgettes, with every batch looking different: some slender, some plump, some a deep almost bottle green, some a green so pale it’s nearly sallow. And lemons, hundreds of limone di Sorrento, with their huge dimensions, elliptical shape, thick sunshine yellow skin and pleasant citrus smell. This is the luscious, ripe taste of summer: the mounds of red and yellow peppers in the stalls, the six or more kinds of tomatoes, some for salads, some only for sauce, the aubergines with purple, mauve, or white skin. Further along there is the seafood stalls, laden with elegantly tapered blue-backed sea bass, the ferocious monkfish, its tooth-bristling jaws sprung open, the choleric-looking-orange-red scorpion fish, so good for fish soup, skate-wings spread out like delicate pink fans, silver sardines evoking thoughts of a smoking charcoal grill, and their more silvery cousins, the fresh anchovies, born to be floured and fried. Every sight is a literal feast for the eyes, and as people hustle and bustle past it’s easy to get lost in the hubbub of it all: the colours, the smells, the sound of bartering Italian voices.

They weave through the masses, forming little groups and agreeing to meet back at the square at two; Tania has a tote bag on one arm, ready to fill it with ingredients for tonight’s supper; Loras is already tugging Renly in the direction of some boutique clothes shop with leather satchels and desert boots in the window. Everyone seems raring to go, so much so that after twenty minutes Sansa has lost Margaery somewhere between the fruit sellers and a high-end shoe shop, and when she turns round to look for Carina or Alessandra and Robert they’re not there either. A quick text is sent to Margaery but she doubts she’ll get an immediate reply, so instead she ambles back round to the lemon stall and pretends to eye them up as if she’s considering buying — though that would be difficult because she did French and German at school and not Italian.

 _I know where the square is from here, so it’s probably best if I just stay put._ Alone now, she lets herself daydream about cold lemon granita and Sicilian lemonade as she walks slowly along the stalls, fingers occasionally lighting on a downy peach or a ripe nectarine. It’s so hot today that she can feel the perspiration building on the back of her neck where her hair hangs down thickly like a curtain. Ordinarily, she’d consider going for a dip in the pool once they’re back at the villa, but she’s unsure now: a little scared off in case _he_ might be there, all prickly and disapproving with those eyes that won’t stop staring.

“Sansa?” A voice calls out to her and a tall body turns sideways to slip between a pair of grocery laden Italian grandmas. He looks a little frazzled, evidently uncomfortable with the heat and the crowds, but then that frazzled look is replaced with one of relief when he finally stops to stand beside her.

“Stannis, hi.” She blinks up at him, wondering why he’s suddenly in front of her, wondering why he took the time to find her. “I lost Margaery. I’ve texted her where I am but she’s awful at checking her phone.”

“She’s getting gelato with Loras and Renly.” His voice is so matter of fact, only slightly altering when someone with a large bag jostles him into her. He glares at the back of bag lady’s head, peering over his shoulder until her shape becomes lost amongst the other shoppers and weekday tourists.

“Oh.” She doesn’t know what else to say. _Why is he here? Why did he bother? Why—_ “Well, thank you for coming to find me.”

“It’s ok.” They haven’t moved, they’re just standing there, not buying anything and probably getting in people’s way. But still they don’t move.

“Did you not want to get gelato as well?” An innocent question: just to keep him here a bit longer, just to draw this out a little longer. _Stay here with me_. _Keep talking._

“No, I…” He pauses, eyes roaming over her. His mouth opens slightly and she watches the way he quickly wets his lips.

“What?” She smiles, leaning into him just a little.

“Nothing.” His throat bobs as he swallows. “It doesn’t matter.” She’s reminded again of how hot it is: the sun is high in the sky and there’s barely any breeze.

“If you only knew how little I know about the things that really matter.”

She feels like she is treading water, trying neither to drown nor to swim to safety, just staying in place, because here was the truth — even if neither of them could speak the truth, or even hint at it, yet she would swear it lay around them, the way you might say of a necklace you’ve just lost while swimming: you know it’s down there somewhere. If he knew, if he only knew that she was giving him every chance to put two and two together and come up with a number bigger than infinity.

“What things that matter?” He tries not to seem taken aback, but she can see it in the way his eyes flash and his shoulders tense.

“Ever since Joff— _because_ of Joff…” She frowns, looking down at her feet and biting her lip. “I’ve never—I’ve never wanted… _You_ of all people should know what I’m talking about.”

Silence.

“Why are you telling me all this?”

She looks up at him.

“Because I thought you should know.”

“Because you thought I should know.” He repeats her words slowly, trying to take in their full meaning, all the while sorting them out, playing for time.

“Because I want _you_ to know,” she blurts out. “Because there’s no one else I can say it to but you. No one else who would understand.” There, she’s said it. Is she making any sense? She’s about to backtrack, to sidetrack the conversation by saying something about the market or the weather tomorrow and whether it might be a good idea to head to the beach.

But to his credit he doesn’t let her loose.

“Do you know what you’re saying?”

A thought races through her mind: will her descendants know what was spoken on this very street corner today? Will anyone? Or will it dissolve into thin air, as she finds part of herself wishing it would? Will they know how close to the brink their fate stood on this day on this street corner? The thought amuses her and gives her the necessary distance to answer him bravely.

“Yes, I know what I’m saying and you’re not mistaking any of it.”

In thirty, forty years, she’ll come back to Sorrento and think back on a conversation she knows she’ll never forget, much as she might want to someday. She’ll come here with her husband, her children, show them the sights, point out to the bay, the lemon groves, the gelaterie, the Piazza Tasso. Then she’ll stand here and ask the market stalls and the window shutters and the street lamps to remind her of someone called Stannis.

“You’ve no idea how difficult you’re making this for me,” he says finally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Longer chapter this time around and things are getting even more intense!
> 
> Reviews, as always, are very much appreciated!
> 
> Cappy x


	7. Siren

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas! Here's some Stansa ;)
> 
> (Disclaimer: I don't own anything apart from my OCs, but special shoutout to Call Me By Your Name for being a major influence. A beautiful book and film).

“Why am I am making things difficult?”

She blinks back at him, cheeks flushed and eyes squinting a little until he shifts to block out the sun glaring so brilliantly behind him; casting shadows against the market stalls and their sloping canopies. His heart is beating too fast for him to really think or speak coherently. _Where do I fucking start?_ Any shame he might have felt at appearing so unsettled by her has vanished; lifted up upon a breeze to evaporate beneath the sun’s heated rays.

“Because it would be very wrong.”

He stares down at her, watching the way her tongue dives out to wet her parched lips before the corners of her mouth become downturned. At the base of her neck her red hair curls slightly, a little damp with perspiration. It seems like these luminous days will never end. Just like the aching for her will never end. But aching is not a stable condition; it must resolve into something. He shuts his eyes against the searching blue of her persistent gaze. He scrubs a hand across his brow, palm hot and not at all soothing. _Get a grip,_ he says to himself. Over and over. It terrifies him, the fragility of these sorts of moments.

“ _Would?_ ” Her voice is small but tinged with hopefulness. It surprises him. But only for a moment.

“Yes, _would._ There’s no point in me lying and saying that—” He opens his eyes and hesitates, words caught just like his eyes are caught in her open, pleading gaze. His throat is dry when he swallows. “That the thought of _us_ hasn’t crossed my mind.”

He knows his voice sounds resentful, angry even: uttered between clenched teeth. But it is not directed at her and he hopes she knows that. All his loathing is entirely aimed at himself. _But if she wants you too…_

A frenzied kind of frustration bubbles within him as he regards her deceptively blank face, only the slight flush of her cheeks and shine in her eyes giving away anything. He resolves then to stare her down without breaking, daring her to admit her ruse, to backtrack and recoil from the seriousness of his desire. Her eyes eventually falter, shifting downwards as several shoppers bustle past them, but it doesn’t matter, he’s hardly aware of anyone but her in this moment. And though he wants to feel triumphant at catching her out, he doesn’t. Instead he feels his stomach sink, as though he’s swallowed a weight so heavy it might drown him if he were suddenly tossed into open water.

“Well, I’d be the last to know.”

His eyes widen and he gives her an incredulous, somewhat frantic look. He lets out a choked laugh that is completely devoid of humour.

“What did you think was going on?" 

“Going on?” She fumbles by way of a question. “I don’t know, I…” She pauses to think about it some more, chewing her bottom lip. The shyness of her posture, the slope of her shoulders, they suddenly disappear as she straightens and looks at him with purpose, indicating that her next words, more than any said previously, will hold a certain weight: “I didn’t think anything was going on because I thought—I _assumed_ I was the only one with feelings involved.”

“I see.” He blows out a breath. “Well, you were wrong, weren’t you.” There is a chiding condescension in his voice, but it is tempered by the sad, defeated way he looks at her.

And so they fall into silence. A silence entirely theirs because around them are people, people. Even as the market winds down and unsold produce is slowly packed away, there is an energy and liveliness here that is completely at odds with the quiet, stilted way they now regard one another. People are preparing for the evening to come. For him nothing else signifies, nothing but her and now.

Where do they go from here? What is there to add? And what will happen the next time they pretend not to speak but are no longer sure the frost between them is a sham? The hot summer air is heavy with all these Thoughts and Things to Say. But at times like this, only the Small Things are ever said. It’s the Big Things that lurk unsaid. When it’s mutual, you know, instinctively, wordlessly. And really he had known, _they_ had known. And they may do nothing about it, but the knowledge of that shared desire is still out there in the world — as obvious as glowing neon, saying _I want you, I want you, I want you._

It is almost a relief when Margaery, Renly and Loras find them, swiftly followed by the rest of their group with a few extra friends Alessandra bumped into and has subsequently invited over for dinner later. If he hears their names he doesn’t remember them. He doesn’t remotely care who these effervescent, vivacious people are. And it’s not just because he’s hopelessly introverted, no, it’s more than that. It’s _her_. He can’t concentrate on anyone, anything but her.

His glances are long, too long, but he cannot withhold them. He watches as she edges further and further away from him, walking on up ahead until she disappears into Tania and Aurelio’s car, followed by a talkative Margaery. It is only with the slam of the car door that he is able to finally look away.

The beautiful stone of walls and farms pass him by as he sits rigid in the back seat of Robert’s Maserati, barely listening to Vincent’s well-meant attempts to draw him into conversation. The patterns of fields pass, some pale as bread, others sea-dark. They ride along on empty country roads, which are entirely theirs at this time of day, where the sun has pounded exposed patches along the route. Along one stretch of roadside, tiny stunted palm trees and gnarled olive trees stud the copse. Through the trees, zooming past, he is just able to see an incline leading towards the very edge of a cliff.

It’s funny, he remembers reading somewhere — in a _Guardian_ travel article maybe, or a Lonely Planet thumbed through at the big Waterstones in Piccadilly — that Sorrento derives it name from _Surrentum_ , from the Sirens. Clever Odysseus managed to escape being dashed to pieces against those rugged cliffs but can he? Can he resist her; does he have the sense to plug his ears with wax or the will to tie himself to the ship’s mast? _I’m losing the plot._ He shouldn’t shirk the blame. Her siren call and him effectively helpless, as if he isn’t entirely at fault here. _This is a right bloody mess I’ve got myself into._

When they make it back to the house, he heads straight to his room, briskly sidestepping his brothers’ attempts to direct him towards a seat on the patio. He ignores their questioning glances — by now they should be well versed in his tendency to just exit any given social situation, no explanation offered. He ends up just lying on his bed, on top of the sheets because really the heat is too stifling.

For a little while, maybe just an hour or so, he manages to sleep, and he dreams of _her_ again. In his dream they are here, in his room, with Sansa’s back on the bed and him above her. And he watches, on her face, an expression at once so flushed, so readily acquiescent, that even in his sleep it tears every emotion out of him, telling him one thing he could never have known or guessed so far: that not to give what he is dying to give her at whatever price is perhaps the greatest crime he might ever commit in his life. He desperately wants to give her something. By contrast, taking seems so bland, so facile, so mechanical. He doesn’t want to take from her. Doesn’t want to be selfish with her. _I need to close the door on this._

With the window flung open in hopes of coaxing in a breeze, he watches as the day slips into night, noting the wondrous tonal transformations of the sunset on its dimmer switch: how blood-orange can shade imperceptibly into ice-blue on the knife-edge of the horizon. He hasn’t heard much movement below him or outside. The day has seduced all thought away, and no doubt the others have been lying around like lizards in the sun, postponing their lives indefinitely. He wishes he could take a moment’s pause like that, but his mind is always whirring: thinking about work, his responsibilities, what to do and when to do it; _if_ to do it at all.

When there is an eruption of voices and movement at the sound of a car pulling up, he forces himself to tumble out of bed, head rushing a little and eyes blinking back against the blurring. At this hour the air is now a little chilly and noises seem to ring in it. He hears the Italians break into one chorus of laughing exclamation as he begins to walk down the creaking staircase. He tries not to wonder where she is right now and instead tries to remember whether there had been any young men amongst Alessandra’s dinner guests. It’s stupid really and beneath him, but still, he wonders. _She’d be better off with someone her own age anyway._

Dinner is a lavish affair, as always. With a broad smile, he watches as Alessandra steps out onto the patio holding a large plate of _crespelle_ : a tall stack of pancakes, thin and delicate, layered in the manner of lasagne, with an earthy filling of tomato, prosciutto and mozzarella. She is met with applause and she rolls her eyes good-humouredly, evidently used to such praise.

“You should be thanking Sansa too! She helped me.”

Everyone at the table turns to look at her, and so does he, even though he has been doing his best _not to look_ ever since a winking Carina pushed him down into a seat beside her. She blushes prettily at the compliments that quickly follow. But then her eyes, so clear and searching, shift to him and then they are caught. He feels the need to say something, _anything_ but what?

“It, uh, looks good. Well done.”

He wants to hit himself. But instead reaches for his wine glass and takes a large sip. He abruptly angles his body away from her, unprepared to ponder over the way her mouth had slightly opened in surprise or the way her hair looks right now, glowing copper in the soft candlelight.

Around them is a mix of voices rising and falling over one another as glasses clink and cutlery scrapes. Opposite, Vincent is passing over his cigarette to Margaery to finish, his face amused and knowing. Her head is bent forward a little and then it straightens up as she lets out a long stream of smoke into the night air. They continue to talk and he notices that she is never still. Margaery seems to writhe in the older man’s gaze with slight, almost imperceptible movements. He wonders, absentmindedly, if Sansa’s best friend knows what she’s doing.

“Thank you.”

Her voice is quiet but he hears it. Of course he would. But he doesn’t say anything, just keeps looking away as laden plates are passed down the table into eager hands. He keeps looking away because he knows she is staring at him, can feel her eyes on the side of his face, burning a hole there.

“And, um, just so you know…” She pauses, and he finds himself shifting in his chair slightly, body inclining towards her against his better judgement. “I think you’re wrong. About _us_ being wrong.”

He doesn’t speak to her for the rest of the meal, but then he doesn’t really speak to anyone else either. He lets himself look though. He allows himself that. He looks and she looks back, stealing glances between sips of red wine. This, he thinks, is the first time he has dared himself to stare back at her. Usually, he casts a glance and then looks away — look away because he doesn’t want to swim in the lovely, clear pool of her eyes unless he has been invited to — and he never waits long enough to know whether he is even wanted there; look away because he is too shit scared to stare anyone back; look away because he doesn’t want to give anything away; look away because he can’t acknowledge how much she matters. And yet here he is, _looking._

The knock on his door later that night is so soft he almost doesn’t hear it. He’d gone up relatively early, giving Sansa one last long glance before leaving the candles and red wine behind. His progress towards bed has been slow and languid: he has brushed his teeth in the en suite and run a wet flannel over his face to cool himself down, but little else. He almost thinks, for a very brief moment, that maybe he has imagined it. _The knocking._ And yet he knows, deep down, _he knows_ who is on the other side.

He opens the door slowly at first and then with a sudden rush that startles her. He stares down at Sansa, heart thudding. And before he knows it, she brushes past him into the room, spinning round to face him with an anxious, bright-eyed look. Cautiously, but with purpose, he follows her to where she stands in front of the large French windows; moonlight filtering in through their slightly open shutters. They are close but not quite touching. The floorboards beneath their bare feet creak ever so slightly as she slides forward to narrow it further.

Maybe they are too close, he thinks. _I’ve never been so close to her except in a dream._ She stares him right in the face, boldly and unashamedly, as though she likes the face she sees and wishes to study it and linger on it. His eyes drift down and he watches her inhale, chest rising, before moving back up to rest upon her wine flushed face. _In vino veritas._

He is distinctly aware that anything and everything might happen now and there’d be no turning back, that this is her way of asking, and here is his chance to say no or to say something and play for time, so that he might still debate the matter with himself, now that it has reached this point — except he doesn’t have any time left, because she is bringing her lips to his, in a warm, shy, conciliatory, I’ll-meet-you-halfway-but-no-further kiss. Her lips catch his lips, pressing, her retreat halted by his hand reaching to cup the nape of her neck, famished.

He kisses her back almost savagely, hands itching to tangle in her hair and clutch at her waist. She kissed him but now he is kissing her. Kissing her and kissing her. He is the one driving this onward. And she is surrendering to him, inch by inch, and he knows it, and so he wills himself to hold himself in check. He knows that anything he does now, any sudden movement he makes, might disturb the harmony of this moment. So he doesn’t grasp her like he wants to, instead he slips a tentative hand round to the small of her back as she takes a step closer, pressing her body flush against his.

He has a strange sense of finding in each shiver that runs down his arms something totally alien and yet by no means unfamiliar, as if this capacity for sensation has been a part of him all his life and he had just misplaced it for a time and she has helped him find it again. _This is too much._

“You shouldn’t be here,” he murmurs roughly, but though his words speak of protest, his lips still continue to seek her out — seek her lips, her cheek, her fluttering pulse point. Anywhere. Everywhere. “You need to go.”

“Not yet.”

He hears her hum in rapture, sliding her small hands up his chest to clutch at the broad stretch of his shoulders, fingers slipping beneath his shirt collar; the barest brush of skin on skin. His palms trail slowly up her sides, making her shiver and gasp. He is on the cusp of something, but he also wants it to last forever, because he knows there is no coming back from this. But when it happens, _if_ it happens, it will happen not as he has fantasied it, but with a degree of vulnerability that will force him to reveal more of himself than he would ever care to reveal.

“We can’t do this—I know myself.” _I may not be able to hold myself back once I start_ , is what he means to say. He dips his head down against her collarbone and exhales somewhat raggedly; hot breath against her warm skin. He finds himself lightly shaking his head at the impossibility of this situation.

“Please,” she whispers, voice quaking. He feels her fingers stroke his head and her chest heave beneath him. “I want—I need—” She lets out a frustrated little sob, which splits him apart, leaving that doubting, lecturing part of him lost by the wayside. Discarded.

“I know,” he concedes at last, understanding just what she means. Because he feels it too: the ache. A hard, physical longing, like a craving for air underwater. For isn’t desire in a way a kind of drowning? He lifts his head to latch his lips onto hers once more. “Yes,” he says, their mouths grazing, as he wraps her in his arms, desperate to feel every inch of her. “Yes, I know exactly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Does that count as a cliffhanger??
> 
>  
> 
> Reviews, as always, are very much appreciated!
> 
> Cappy x


	8. Lamplight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The moment we've all been waiting for...also my first time posting smut! Hope you like ;)
> 
> I do have an accompanying photocollage for this chapter on tumblr, but it's still in drafts because the idiots over at tumblr are being a pain for no bloody reason...might have to re-do it, which it frustrating. Stay tuned on that. 
> 
> (Disclaimer: I don't own anything apart from my OCs, but special shoutout to Call Me By Your Name for being a major influence. A beautiful book and film).

_Yes, I know exactly._

That is what he had said. It seems like she is seeing everything more clearly now. _Of course! Of course he knows!_ The details of a whole world are being opened to her: his kisses coming softly, lightly, then more urgently, his tongue in her mouth, her hips tilted against his, her breasts against his chest, her whole body sending out a message that is undeniable. _This is it._ She cannot do without him now. Cannot do without _this._ And if there is any way, she thinks, to keep him after all this is over she will do everything she can to find it.

“Stannis…” she hums his name. She touches his face with fragile fingertips.

He starts to undress her, a little awkwardly, as if still holding onto the idea that she isn’t entirely his. His hands move over her with a mix of caution and purpose. The zip of her shorts sliding down; the unbuttoning of her shirt; a soft crumpling upon the floor; bare feet shuffling as she kicks them aside. These sounds, her awkward laughter, they fill the quiet room. _His room._ She smoothes a hand up his linen-clad chest, the tight weave, warm from his skin and the last rays of sun. Her fingers find the buttons. Her other hand reaches for him, the back of his neck. He keeps kissing her, desperately, even as her hands find the buckle at his waist. Even as his fingers trace her back, following the line.

It’s like a little dance: the way they shuffle and move, shucking off clothes in the shrouding near darkness, the music thin and foreign, rising from below where people still drink and chatter on the patio. _There’s nowhere I’d rather be. Does he feel the same?_ A moment of panic seizes her as they part for breath. His hands still, feeling her tense beneath them and he looks at her quizzically.

“You, uh, want this too, don’t you?”

She wants him to be as sure about this as she is. Wants him to be sure about _her._ She feels suddenly self-conscious: standing there in just her underwear and him still mostly clothed: he still has his trousers on; his shirt pushed down but caught at the bend of his elbows. This isn’t some meaningless, illicit fuck for her. She doesn’t quite know what this is; can’t quite dredge up the courage to ascribe it the proper meaning. But she knows it isn’t _that._

His hands tug her forward, back into the circle of his arms and she realises, without meaning to, that she has taken a step away from him. He frowns down at her, brow creasing as he lets out a disgruntled little huff, which makes her smile despite herself. Then, to her immense pleasure and relief, he dips his head to nuzzle against her, his lips on her neck, kissing his way up to her earlobe, where she giggles, ticklish, squirming slightly in his tightening embrace.

“You’re still here aren’t you? I haven’t told you to shove off.”

His voice is low, burying itself deep within her skin.

“You did earlier.”

He kisses along her flushed cheek, then nips at her lower lip; his face all dark eyes and confident smoulder. It’s the most playful she has ever seen him. Sansa blinks back owlishly, a little astounded yet infinitely pleased.

“I was trying to be...” His eyes get lost for a moment, somewhere to the left of her face, searching. “ _Honourable_ , I suppose.”

“Honourable?” She says the word slowly.

“Hmm. Too late for that now.”

She wants to sound teasing and flirtatious. _Experienced_. But instead her voice comes out high, breathless:

“Got big plans for me, do you?”

“Yes.”

He doesn’t elaborate. He doesn’t need to. His lips on hers tell her better than all his stumbling words. Whatever had held them apart, whatever had restrained their bodies before, is now gone. Down below, the music drifts upwards, slipping through the open window, rising, falling in the moonlight, softly curling around them as he edges her towards the bed.

When he pushes her onto the mattress, Sansa is already wet, though was there any doubt in her mind that she wouldn’t be? She watches, a little bleary-eyed, as he hastily tears the shirt from his body; whipping one arm a little wildly when it catches at his wrist, refusing to budge. She laughs, which earns her a narrow-eyed, red-cheeked look as he bends to slip off his trousers.

“Sorry,” she squeaks, lips pursed to hide her impish grin.

How different it is to stand in front of someone in your underwear instead of your swimsuit. The same revealing of flesh, yet somehow it’s completely different. More exposed. More vulnerable. He stands there, long limbs looking even longer in the shadows cast by the moonlight and glow of the bedside lamp. His hair looks even darker: on his head and on the flat planes of his chest. Everything about him is just _more_ tonight. She can’t explain it.

He takes a step closer, his now bare legs bumping up against the end of the bed before he bends at the knees, sinking into the firm mattress. There is a mysterious slowness to all his movements, almost as if he is thinking each one out. Even so, they have the grace of a dream. His eyes are hooded; his hands slide slowly against the bed-sheets, arms bent; a shard of moonlight caresses the broad curve of one tanned shoulder.

Watching him as he watches her, she presses herself down against the pillows. Pillows that smell faintly of him. Of noonday sun on freshly pressed cotton, warm skin with just a hint of chlorine, lapping gently, washing over remnants of rubbed in suntan lotion, the scent of summer, cut through with the cleanness of sharpening citrus soap. She breathes him in. A deep breath. And then he’s there, settling above her. Dark eyes staring her down. Piano keys ringing, a cymbal tap tap taping, a man’s voice crooning, drifting in through the shutters on the cool night air.

He is everywhere and he is everything. She almost faints with the joy of it, the mazing, palpable reality that he is touching her, that she is touching him, that they are dovetailed, entangled, coiled like dreamy sun soaked snakes. She feels him against her, hard and insistent as their hands move all over, into inner thigh, up rounded curves, down smooth necks. Tight calves and legs lifting. It seems as if nearly every part of her body is being touched by his, that from now on the entire world is to be apprehended only through touch, so that in the hazy warmth of his bed, the near darkness of his room, they cannot help but find themselves starting to writhe gently, every movement, every tiny adjustment creating new waves of spiking pleasure, until finally they are rocking back and forth, cradle-like, lips fused, until she cannot maintain it any longer and has to stop.

“I need—I need to tell you something,” she gasps, catching her breath.

Lips skim her collarbone. Fingers trace the clasp of her bra.

“I’ve…I’ve never done this before.”

Everything stops. He rolls away from her with a loud exhale. His hands rest low on his stomach, just above the waistband of his underwear, as he stares fixedly up at the ceiling.

“Is…is that not ok?” Her voice is so very small.

“Of course it’s ok.”

She turns on her side to look at him: he’s frowning, brow heavy and mouth tight. She feels a fluttering queasiness low in her belly.

“Tell me what you’re thinking.”

Dropping her gaze, she touches one of his idle hands. Then slowly, taking heart, she begins to stroke his fingers one by one, waiting for his reply.

“I’m thinking that you deserve better.”

She has to laugh at that. Because doesn’t he see? Doesn’t he know?

He’s frowning even more now, turning his head to face her.

“Why is that funny?”

“Because…because you’re an idiot.”

Her hand slips away from his as he abruptly sits up. He peers down at her, incredulous scowl in place.

“Pardon?”

“Am I really going to have to say it out loud?”

He gives her a confused look when her mirth fades, replaced with a weak smile, so cautiously vulnerable. His voice is soft when he next speaks, the same look of fragility mirrored on his own face.

“Evidently.”

How does he not know? How can he still be so oblivious? It’s as tragic as it is comical.

“Stannis…I think you’re wonderful.” She wants to touch him again, wants to hold him, for him to hold her. “It’s you I want to do this with. No one else.”

“Oh.” She’s pretty sure she sees his cheeks flush red before he quickly turns his face away, intent on staring at the wall. “Regardless, I—I don’t have any condoms.”

“That’s ok, I, um, I have the implant.” She sits up, her shoulder bumping his. Impulsively, she takes one of his hands so she can press two fingers down on the inner part of her upper arm. “There, can you feel it?”

She hears him exhale. Feels him shift beside her. She crosses her legs, one foot hooking under the other.

“Yes.”

His hand slides down her arm. Her loose hair brushes his knuckles, glowing copper in the soft lamplight. He takes her hand, turns it over to stroke his fingers lightly across her palm. Feather light. It is these quiet exchanges that cement them. They remain close. He doesn’t pull away. _He won’t_ , she thinks. And for the most part, she believes it.

He looks up, he meets her eyes, he leans in. With his forehead touching hers, she can feel the improbable weight of his eyelashes against her own.

“Are you sure?”

“Completely.”

She doesn’t know what to do now, what he might like. She touches his face, feels the slight quirk of his mouth beneath her fingertips. She kisses his neck, the span of his chest, tastes the salt. They slide down; they curl into one another, his body quickly covering hers; warm and broad and safe. If the earth spins it falters, if the wind blows it waits. Hands find skin, find curves, find faces.

Once again, they lose themselves in the circumnavigation of one another. He cups her face as their hips crush, strokes her long hair, soft from all that swimming. She turns in his arms, letting his hands roam, mouths parting and breath expelling as he unfastens the clasp of her bra. She hears it hit the floor, but doesn’t see where it lands. Her breath becomes short.

A gentle push and she’s on her back again, watching while his hands touch her chest, tracing her breasts in excruciating, slow designs. She likes him handling her like this: possessive and sure, but gentle and reverent too. She watches as he dips his head to kiss her skin. To kiss the slight, rose-coloured trench that remains of her bra elastic, running around her upper ribs like the equator line circling the world.

“Beautiful.” She feels the word against her skin.

She feels the calloused brush of his thumb, the sweep of his lips, the flick of tongue. She finds herself gripping his shoulders, the base of his neck, her head tossed back. His face is warm, flushed, his cheeks a little rough with stubble. It’s a sweet kind of torment, the way his mouth lingers and then refrains. The merest scraping of teeth, felt amidst a wet suck. _What a tease_ , she thinks; as she bites down a smile, lower lip stinging. And all the while she is writhing, rocking up against him as his hips bear down on hers. Wanting something _there_ but too shy to ask.

“Beautiful.” He says it again.

He has her gasping at that, choked and disbelieving. All these little noises. She feels his self-satisfied smirk more than she sees it. She feels it against her skin as one of his hands drifts down, slipping between their heated bodies to tease along the line of her underwear. His lips leave her chest, fastening onto her neck while she hums impatiently into his ear, hips straining.

“Is this ok?”

She doesn’t know how to put into words her eager consent, so instead removes a hand from his shoulder, slipping it between them. She tugs down her underwear, one-handedly and with some difficulty, huffing slightly with frustration and a fluttering sense of anticipation. Against her ear, she hears him laugh as eyelashes graze her neck, the sound of it low and rumbling. He lifts his hips to help her. His larger, surer hand joins hers. Then, like her bra before it, this final vestment finds its place somewhere on the floor. Discarded and forgotten.

The first touch of his fingers sends heat to her face and sparks to her core. She squeezes her eyes shut as she clamps her thighs against his wrist, snapping her hips upwards. His lips brush the shell of her ear as his fingers stroke her, finding the source of her wetness and spreading it. He thumb soon circles her round to madness. She finds herself breathing in and in and in. Panting. Two fingers, then a stretch, a slow parting that has her biting her lip to keep from keening too loudly. She can’t help it, she clenches; feels his hot exhale run down her neck.

“ _Fuck_.”

Stannis swearing excites her more that she expects. It is evidence that she has somehow knocked him off kilter. Evidence that the reserved, straight-laced man, always swimming away from her in the pool, is now very much gone. Them together like this. It must mean something.

His fingers begin to move: slow at first and then picking up the pace; curling upwards, sending sparks just where she didn’t know she needed it. _Close, close, close._ She thrusts up: once, twice, three times before she freezes, all the muscle in her thighs and belly and bum tensing. She contracts against his fingers, feels the flutter. She lets out a shuddering breath. One of her hands is on his shoulder, the other slowly stroking down his back, from the nape of his neck to the base of his spine. She holds onto him, coming down from this high. Both his arms are bent at the elbows, his face hidden beside hers on their shared pillow.

Neither of them speaks for a moment. Her legs are raised, bracketing his waist. She can feel the terrible effort of his restraint. Can feel him hot and solid and straining between her thighs, but still covered. Her trailing fingers hesitate, pausing on the small of his back.

“Still sure?”

These whispered words overcome her. She turns her head to face him, noses bumping gently. Their mouths meet. There is light from the crack under his door, a light that slowly reveals the unlit parts of the room. Right now, all is hazy and golden, warm and enclosing. Through the wall come the weak voices of two people heading to bed: padding footsteps against creaking wood, yawns stifled and then given into. She nods back at him, both hands reaching down to push off his last scrap of clothing. That final barrier before true nakedness.

When she feels him _there_ it is different now because nothing separates them. They are skin on skin. True naked. No secrets.

His hand finds her fingers and grips them, bone and tendon, fragile things. This is how it begins, slowly, with her hand in his. He rubs himself against her, blunt and searching, seeking her out. She lies gazing up at him. Stannis leans down to kiss her parted lips, deeply, searingly, as if something in him is finally letting go. He half releases her, half guides. She feels the stretch, the slow progression, the beginnings of a jarring ache.

She squeezes his hand and he squeezes it back. They stare at each other, foreheads pressed and eyelashes brushing. In the dark ocean of his eyes she sees an intensity of love and expectation, wanting this moment to last forever, knowing there will be no coming back from this. When it happens, when he is fully inside, there is a degree of pain and discomfort. Eyes close and then are opened. His face is implacable, lost to a pleasure she is only on the cusp of. Pressed flush against her pelvis, he holds himself there. He waits while she adjusts. He drops his head to brush kisses along her collarbone, breath strained and heavy.

He then shifts his weight, rotates his hips very slightly. He retreats, but not quite, he pushes back in. An experiment in restraint. And on it goes, tentative and slow; arms tense and back rigid. Like a thread unspooling, the ache starts to fade. Muscles relax and flesh accommodates. What was at first a mercy is now a frustration. Her knees press tightly against his waist, as she arches over his back.

“ _More_ …please.”

She can hardly get the words out; her mind is so muddled. _This is real. This is happening._ His pace quickens. Pulling out further and pushing in harder. He’s making noises too now: forceful exhales and choked out moans.

“Alright?”

His inquiry sounds almost torn from him, rasping and raw. He is just as out of sorts as she is, probably more so. She grips his hand, that hand still holding hers, not letting go. With eyes closed, she rushes out a reply:

“I’m good. I’m really good.”

His warm slide in and out no longer feels like a strange intrusion, but like something that is already a part of her. They are so tangled up, their bodies flush and entwined; it’s not so hard to believe. She has no sense of wanting him to ever finish: she reaches and pushes against him just to feel more. A wrestling embrace. The hand not holding hers slides down to grip her thigh and tug it upwards, her foot now bumping against the backs of his legs. The other leg follows suit, needing no direction, moving in tandem with the rest of her body as it rises off the bed.

And then he is rolling down to meet her, pressing her flat against the bed with the force of his movement. Her ankles lock together, she clings on tight. It feels even better like this. Her hand smoothes over the hot planes of his back, fingers sliding over the ridges. The wet sounds of his thrusting; the slap of skin on skin; Sansa’s own high-pitched whimpers. It should all make her blush and want to block her ears, but it doesn’t. Instead it just adds to the intoxication, held in the balance, a body against a body, spurring her on. _This is right_ , she thinks. This is the most right thing.

The flutter from before returns; she rubs up against him as his hips crash down. His rhythm is faltering. His face feels so warm when his presses it to her neck. Fire of fire. They are matches ready to catch. Ecstatic and alive, she finds herself wanting to ask, _is this me? Is this you? Are we really here?_ But when he comes, it downs them both. Pleasure inexplicable. They light up, then crumble like sand.

They lie where they have fallen, him on top of her, both dazed and him just a little too heavy. But for the moment she doesn’t mind. Their palms feel sweaty, still pressed together despite it all. She smiles and thinks about how he found her in the market, blue eyes squinting in the sun. She can’t let him go now. She wants to go places with him; obscure little places, just to be able to say: here I came with him.

Her chest strains against his and he notices. Their hands finally part as he slides down, slipping out of her to find a more comfortable position. He settles himself between her legs, her pelvis for a pillow, her knees within his grasp. Stannis turns his head a little to look at her. Sansa meets his eyes with a shy smile, her fingers softly combing through his hair. Beneath his ear is wet. They’ll have to deal with that at some point, but for now they are content to stay as they are. Naked and spent and the lamplight glowing. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I wanted this chapter to be (hopefully) sexy but still real, i.e. not a seamless, straightforward removal of clothes. Hope you guys liked it! 
> 
> Nerdy Side Note:
> 
> – The music playing outside on the patio is 'Che Vuole Questa Musica Stasera' by Peppino Gagliardi. I don't imagine it at full blast, but slightly muffled by the distance, softly drifting up to our lovebirds ;) 
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljDcvhkRuOc&list=RDljDcvhkRuOc&start_radio=1
> 
> Reviews, as always, are very much appreciated!
> 
> Cappy x


	9. Falling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back at it again with these two ;) This time from Stannis' POV. 
> 
> (Disclaimer: I don't own anything apart from my OCs, but special shoutout to Call Me By Your Name for being a major influence. A beautiful book and film).

Ah, what bliss it is to feel this content, to press hands, press lips, smile into eyes. He has so much to say to her now. He wants to begin at the beginning, because he’s never had the courage to do that before. He wants to tell her everything, without leaving out a single detail. But where is the beginning? And what is everything? This is all so new. But he likes it. Being alone with her like this, it’s like opening a door away from his normal, shut-in life and then closing it behind him.

They’ve fallen into a shy but knowing silence, thrumming with the tremors of what’s been done. His body has moved back up hers, half covering, his head resting against her breast and their hands intertwined, resting on her hip. _I don’t regret it, any of it. Is that mad?_ It’s hard not to be completely lulled into oblivion by the feel of her fingers combing through his hair. But still, he tries to imagine himself coming down the staircase tomorrow morning, the same one he came up not so long ago. _An hour? Hour and a half? I don’t know. Where does time go?_ By then he might be someone else. Or maybe he’ll remain the same, the outline of him just a little more defined. His sense of self and what he wants a little bit clearer.

He used to tell himself that no matter how much he felt he would never give people the satisfaction of letting it all out. To feel anything deranges you and to be seen feeling anything strips you naked. In the grip of it, pleasure or pain, it doesn’t matter. You think what will they do, what new power will they acquire _if they see me naked like this._ If they see you _feeling._ To be seen is the penalty. Robert could bluster and shout. Renly could have his dramatics. But Stannis would keep it all in. And even if the weight of all his collective resentments started to make his heart go crazy, he wasn’t going tell anyone about it.

But this kind of thinking doesn’t feel quite right anymore. Not here. Not with her. He wants to tell her things, wants to be vulnerable, wants to be _naked_ with her because he knows whatever she might do with it, it won’t be cruel. At least he hopes not.

“You seem far away.”

He looks up at her, the stubble of his cheek grazing the softness of her skin as he shifts. She flushes a little under his gaze, there seems to be a bloom upon her, her eyes shine and deepen, her lips lie softly, almost smiling together. He wants to tell her, explain the jumble of his thoughts—what exactly she means to him, what it means that she chose him. But what he feels for her in that moment can’t really be conveyed in mere phrasal combinations; it either wants to shout out or stay painfully silent. But it beats words. _I think I’m in love with you. I’m in love with you._

“Just…thinking.”

She hums, whether in agreement or understanding he doesn’t quite know. Then she untwists her hand from his and slides out from under him, the hand in his hair trailing a caress down his neck before fully parting. And he lets her go, arms limp and liquid, even though a frown mars his face: bunching up his eyebrows and making his mouth tight. _Don’t go. Stay._ She moves quickly to sit on the end of the bed, her red hair brushing the small of her back, catching the glow of the bedside lamp.

He wants to touch her there, that smooth stretch of skin, let his fingers trace the ridges. But there’s something skittish about her movements, shoulders held a little high, that makes him hold back. So instead he refrains and he pushes himself up, back crushing against the pillows, to watch as she bends to pick up his discarded shirt where it's rumpled on the floor. She slips it on.

As she rises there is a flash, a moment before the fabric falls into place. The inside of her thighs are wet, she glistens with it. Her bare feet make no noise as she treads carefully towards the en suite, feeling the cool of the night upon the floorboards. And he watches. He knows now that she’d mistaken his stares—his _looking_ and _not looking_ —for barefaced hostility. But she was wide off the mark. It was simply a shy man’s way of holding someone else’s gaze. They are, it finally dawns on him, two of the shyest people he knows.

He hears the faint _click_ of a light-switch and then the splash and gurgle of running water. He doesn’t know whether, in her absence, to slide beneath the covers or to remain above them. Does she just want to sleep or does she…he doesn’t know. With Sansa it is different. Nearness with her is different from nearness with anyone else. Everything inside this room is between them only, even the awkward or embarrassing things, like this internal debate he’s having on whether to stay on show or to hide away. They could do or say anything they wanted and no one would know. It’s just between them.

It gives him a vertiginous, light-hearted feeling when he thinks about it. When he touched her earlier she had been so wet, and she had rolled her eyes back into her head and amidst the quiet moans had whispered: _More, please._ And she was allowed to say it, because it was just between them. In that moment he’d been half afraid he might fall apart completely just from touching her like that.

He gets under the covers, because well, he’s not bold enough to do otherwise. Not yet. Not when things are still so new between them. Uncertain. He pushes the unease this inspires aside because soon enough she is smiling timidly back at him from across the room, hands behind her back and leaning on the doorjamb. In his shirt and her long legs crossed at the ankle.

“Come here.” The softness of his voice, the look in his eyes, it pulls her forward. Magnetic. Like there was never any doubt that she wouldn’t always return to him.

She approaches the bed. His hands rise silently in the near darkness to receive her, to draw her down. Then she is leaning over him and kissing his temple, his cheek, his lips, her small hand pressed to the bare skin of his ribcage, the other stroking his hair back. It’s almost as he were an empty well and didn’t quite know it until just now when she uncovered him and it started to rain.

He reaches for her hand and she gives it to him. For a second he holds it, his thumb moving over her knuckles as he kisses her. Softly, tender in his exploration because there is no urgency. Just a simple enjoying of the moment. Then he lifts her hand to his mouth and kisses it.

“I like this,” she says, and he can hear her smile.

He nods. She presses her lips against his chin, his jaw, trailing her affections upwards to his lips, touching his chest with light fingertips, sighing, whispering, “You feel so good.”

Instead of answering, he reaches for her, rolls his body over hers, from one end of the bed to the centre, haphazardly kicking the bed-sheets down so it’s only his shirt between them. _So much for modesty._ His slips his large, warm hand beneath her neck so he can lift her lips to his. This kiss starts lightly at first, and but then becomes more urgent—his tongue in her mouth, her hips tilted against his, her breasts crushed against his chest, her whole body sending a message that is undeniable. And in response to it he feels a low gratifying ache beginning to build—not as quick off the mark as before, but gaining a gradual momentum nonetheless. The bedsprings creak quietly as his hips press down on hers. He hears himself groan, hears her intake of breath as he sucks on her lower lip.

He’s not quite hard, but he knows he will be soon. _Does it never end? The wanting of her?_ His hand slides up her bare leg, palm skimming the curve of her bent knee until he’s fumbling with the buttons of his own shirt, desperate to be skin on skin with her once more.

“ _Fuck_ , Sansa…” His lips crush against the space where her jaw meets the small shell of her ear. “You’ve no idea…” He catches himself, hides his face in the crook of her neck, the breadth of his palm slipping beneath his unbuttoned shirt to lie flat against her bare stomach, feeling its gentle rise and fall.

“What?” Her fingers brush against the nape of his neck, then down to caress a line from one shoulder blade to the other, curious and waiting.

These little displays of affection are all at once so perfectly perfect and also jarringly unfamiliar. He doesn’t linger in women’s beds, in their arms, doesn’t whisper sweet nothings. He doesn’t do this. And yet he can’t think of anything worse than not being here right now, with her. It’s just strange and a little scary, if he’s truly being honest, and he’s not quite sure if he trusts the reality of it. _Your arms around me aren’t lying, are they?_ _Your hands, so warm against my back—they aren’t lies?_

He rises a bit on his elbows so he can glance down at her and she smiles up at him as if, in his silence, he’s been telling a long story and she is simply listening to it. He understands now that his heart operates on its own instructions, that he has no control over it or, indeed, anything else. So he might as well surrender to it.

“Before, uh…” He makes a noise like a sudden gust of air, but with a little waver in it as if he’s laughing, while his eyes dart briefly down to where her nakedness is covered by his. “I’d try not to look at you—or _stare_ more like—if you ever…if you ever came into a room, or outside, or…” Unconsciously, he seems to illustrate his own point by adverting his gaze from hers for a moment to glance around them, collecting his thoughts. “But then—but _then_ I’d look…and there’s nothing in the world but you.”

As he says these words his hand threads through her hair and his thumb brushes across the swell of her cheek. Sansa’s arms steal around him. Her body touching his, the points of her breasts, the flushed warmth of her skin, is a virtual agony. This, here—it’s unimpeded, frank, human.

“I…I don’t know what to say.” She holds him close, and as she speaks he can feel the movement of her lips where his neck slopes into his shoulder. “No one’s ever—I don’t think anyone’s ever cared to really _see_ me before. They think they see, and sometimes I think so too, but they don’t. Not really.” She laughs, short and suddenly a little weary. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For not making any sense.”

He feels like they are in a dialogue that is about something other than what is being said. “You make sense to me.” And he’s looking at her as he speaks and she’s looking back, and it’s sort of like love, isn’t it? Like saying I love you but not.

“I don’t…I don’t want to hide with you.”

His chest tightens, heart feeling heavy. _Like I love you but not._ “Do you hide with other people?” He presses his lips to the crook of her neck, rubs the straight line of his nose against the curve.

“Sometimes. Don’t you?” Their voices, together like this, are so soft and tellingly quiet. Only they can hear them.

“Yes.” He surprises himself by the quickness of his answer. “It seems easier. Sometimes.” He huffs in hollow amusement at himself, voice muffled by her skin. “Most of the time, really. And I…I suppose over the years I’ve found a certain satisfaction in courting bitterness—feeling somehow superior, but still feeling like a misfit too.”

“Why do you do it?”

“Why?” He pauses and sighs, the resignation he feels masked with a wry smile she can’t see, can only feel against her skin. “Because even though I put up all these walls I know how shaky the foundations are. I know people can hurt me and I don’t want to be hurt.”

“I feel like that too.”

He lifts himself up, elbows sinking into the mattress, to frown down at her. And then he leans back in to press the tip of his nose against hers. _An Eskimo kiss, isn’t that what they call it?_ “I don’t think you should be as hopelessly jaded as me at your age. How old are you, anyway? Twenty-one, twenty-two?”

“I’m twenty-one, and you’re not as old and wise as you think.” She’s smiling again and he likes that, likes that he’s made her smile.

“Oh, really?” She nods and bites her lip, wriggling slightly under him as one of his hands starts to trail teasingly up her side, pushing apart his opened shirt. “Well, I suppose I don’t have a first class degree in English and Ancient History, so that makes me very inferior doesn’t it?”

“Practically plebeian,” she laughs breathlessly, clamping her arm tight against his hand to try to impede its desired destination. “St–stop, Stannis!”

“I’m not doing anything.” He keeps his voice calm and measured but he’s smiling broadly, watching her lamp-illuminated face redden as his hand keeps inching upwards, fingers teasing despite her best efforts to elbow him in the ribs. She’s all warm and golden and adorable and he likes her very much like this.

“You are—you are evil! Evil man!” She makes a little whining whimpering noise as she tries to supress her involuntary laughter and it’s too much for him. His hand abruptly stops its tickling and then he is crashing his lips down onto hers. She responds immediately, kissing him back, her hips responding to his, without inhibition, without exaggeration, as though the connection between their lips and hips and bodies is fluid and instantaneous.

The intensity of those first few kisses soon subsides into something sweeter, something slower—him tugging at her lips with his, their bodies breathing in tandem, him sliding his hands up her waist to bracket her ribs, to graze his thumbs beneath her breasts. _This is it, isn’t it? This is where I want to be._ He feels her jerk beneath him, hips bucking, as his hands move to cup her breasts more fully, the slightly roughened pad of his thumbs brushing over their peaks, feeling them stiffen.

When he lets her roll him onto his back, limbs tangling, her hands rake up his chest. She presses down on his heart with her left hand, feels its hurried beat. He reaches up to push her hair aside, gently sweeping it over her shoulder, fingers catching on the crumpled collar of his unbuttoned shirt. He is hard beneath her, where she sits in his lap, shirttails covering the tops of her thighs, and looking down at him with renewed shyness.

“We don’t have to—”

“I want to.” She has a fond look in her eyes as she regards him, fingers slowly petting his chest, playing with hair there. His hands glide up her thighs to squeeze her hips, shirttails brushing against the back of his palms. He wants it off of her, wants her bare, but isn’t quite sure how to ask. Her tongue darts out to wet her lips and she shifts above him so that he can feel her _there._ When he exhales it comes out quaking.

“Do you want to…”He hesitates, voice breaking a little. His gaze gets lost in the sight of her there, above him, the feel of her weight pressing down on him. His next words come out low, almost as whisper: “Like this?” He rubs his thumbs over the jutting bones of her hips and he watches, waits, for her reaction.

She nods. “Will you show me?”

“Yes.”

He reaches up to push his shirt from her shoulders, hesitating for just a moment, but then her hands are joining his and it’s Sansa who tosses it aside. He then slides a hand over to between of her thighs, brushing over the scant hair there, until he finds what he’s looking for. She tilts herself into his touch, rising on her knees slightly, as his fingers slip between her, eyes hooded and every quiet breath sounding somehow louder in the relative silence of the room.

He doesn’t stop what he’s doing: his gentle stroking, the tip of his middle finger dipping in, teasing, then retreating, spreading, despite another part of him that is pressing up on her, hot and insistent, caught between her splayed thighs. It’s difficult like this, wanting to give her something but also knowing what his own body so desperately wants. Because how can he not think of her, think of her like _that_ , when she is gently writhing and rocking, the wet heat of her, sliding against him as she shifts her hips back and forth?

“Can you…” His ears prick up and his gaze springs up from what he’s doing to look at her face: pinched and pink, because she’s struggling with what to say next or perhaps how best to say it.

He stops, suddenly worried that he’s done something she doesn’t like.

“No! No, don’t stop…just—” And then she’s taking his hand with a little huff and pressing it against her. “ _Here._ ” And then he’s circling it, that special spot, quickening his pace, watching as her head tilts back to expose the long column of her pale neck. Her back arches slightly and he finds himself so very glad that they did away with his shirt—without it, her body glows, pale and smooth, unobstructed, lost in feeling.

Her hand wraps tightly around his wrist, the one that is still clutching at her waist, while her other hand grasps at the crumpled bedding beside their hips, twisting them between her fingers. He hopes she’s close, he really hopes she’s close, because he doesn’t think he can last much longer like this. In a way it’s almost more maddening than the first time, because now he knows exactly what it’s like—to have her and for her to have him in equal measure. But he wants to give this to her first.

When she shudders against him, she accompanies it with noise like an exclamation, the muscles in her inner thighs jumping slightly. He watches, gazing up at her, his shoulders pressed against the pillows. His hands smooth over her hips, down to her bent knees and up again, soothing away the tremors as she reels herself back in.

“Still want to?”

“Please.”

He lifts her up slowly, hands on her waist; he positions her above him, her long hair hanging over his forearms as she bends her head to watch. And when she drops her weight, when he guides her down, she breathes out as if sinking into a bath. Her voice is near invisible, a whisper from another part of the house. She is tight, like the first time, and her brows pinch as she works herself down a little bit further and then up again, fractional, testing movements that make him pant. Her face reveals her exertion; mouth held a little open as she tries to hurry herself into the throws instead of easing her way there.

“Hey.” He reaches up to tuck some loose hair behind her ear, bringing his hand back round again to cup her face. Her wide eyes meet his, so blue, and he sees in them a glimmer of anxiety and youthful fragility. “You’re alright,” he soothes, thumb smoothing over the flushed apple of her cheek. “I’m right here.”

“Ok.” She breathes out shakily, speaking more to herself than to him. “Ok.”

He lies gazing up at her, not caring about wanting to go faster, or harder, because he likes just looking at her like this. Likes watching as she lowers herself slightly, little by little, her hands on his waist. Likes the angle of their hips, the place where he’s implanted, likes his eyes lingering there. He runs his hands over her body, assisting her, caressing her, guiding her hips, the still cautious rise and fall, the rolling back and forth. He tries to take it all in, to isolate moments, elements of Sansa, but it’s like memorising the reflections of a diamond. The slightest movement, the shift of their hips, and an entirely different brilliance appears.

“Stannis…” She closes her eyes, a blink left too long.

“I’ve got you,” he says. “I’ve got you.”

The darkness has come down, and they fuck in its fragrance. He arches up to see her, to watch himself plunging in; the smell of her is the smell of him. They tumble down, and rise together, clean as air. There is nothing about her he does not adore. His devotion is complete; he is beginning to sense the confusion that arises from the first fears of what life would be like without her. He knows there can be such a thing, but like the answer to a difficult problem, he cannot imagine it. He just wants this, wants her. Wants the days as well as the nights. Days with the windows and shutters wide open in the afternoon, with just the swelling sheer curtains between them and the rolling fields of the olive green valley. _I’m in love with you. Fuck, I’m so in love with you._

He clutches her hips, fingers digging, straining up to her, rising off the bed and reaching into her, saying, “Sansa…” And she rolls down to meet him, gaining in confidence, the sound of them soaring—a body against a body.

It a moment of abandon, he surges up, back off the bed and his arms around her, the crush of his lips capturing her gasp and muffling his moan. Her legs wrap around his waist, holding him tight. His hands palm fervently at her back, the base of their bodies rocking, his hands running all the way down from the nape of her neck to the end of her spine until she is shivering like a poppy stem caught in the rain.

It is at the closet point of their meeting that he feels the spill, feels a moment of supreme dizziness and effervescence, as if he has just run from a theft, ecstatic and alive. Any sound he makes he knows is wordless.

When they are finished, he falls back, all but collapsing, taking her with him. Then they lay like drunkards, her bare leg settling between his, her head tucked beneath his chin. Minutes pass and she disappears to the en suite again. But then she’s back, switching off the bedside lamp with a soft click, a sound that almost echoes. Then in the dark she finds him, slides in beside him, her hands joining his to tug up the crumpled covers. And then he’s curling his body around hers, his stomach against her back, his arm snaking over her waist, holding her close, a firm leg slotted between her thighs and his face pressed against her neck. He kisses her skin, still warm with sex, and her foot brushes against his. They fall asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another sexy (I hope) chapter for you guys ;) 
> 
> Reviews, as always, are very much appreciated!
> 
> Cappy x


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